Loyalty and Scott McClellan

Hmm, the spam filter seems to have blocked my mock-HTML tags around the first line. They read "amateur psychology."

What was the choice we had Kerry? With Bush, at least we have someone that will stand up to the sociopathic Islamic Jihadists (100-million strong) and stands up against the Democrat party hell-bent to bring Sodom and Marxism to America. I sleep well when thinking about how I voted in 2000 and 2004.

I would ask what a snool is, but I'm a man, so Mary Daly probably wouldn't tell me.

"stand up to the sociopathic Islamic Jihadists (100-million strong)"

Guess that is part of what makes me different. I am much more interested in winning than looking tough. Brains over balls. Thank goodness we have that elitist Princeton guy (Petraeus) running things now. He negotiates with the insurgents. Heck, he even liked them so much he bought them.

Steve

snool: Mary Daly incorporates the earlier definitions: "n Scot a cringing person"; also snool v "to reduce to submission; COW, BULLY . . . CRINGE, COWER"--Webster's; [and caps in original so please don't be stylistically offended, Rod] also snool n "a tame, abject, or mean-spirited person"--O.E.D.. Daly adds, "a normal inhabitant of sadosociety, characterized by sadism and masochism combined . . . ."

As someone who works for an elected official, I find the flap over McClellan's book (nope - haven't read it and have zero interest in doing so) interesting for several reasons. I agree with those who have heaped scorn on McClellan for not taking action at the time when he believed that the president was being dishonest. It's easy to have the courage of your convictions after getting the big book advance. Bob Dole's description of McClellan nailed it on the head for me.

That said, it is true that the personality and leadership style of the big boss shapes the type of people that come to work for him. If the boss is comfortable in his own skin and confident in his abilities, he's probably not going to want a bunch of "yes men" around him - he'll like and want to hear different opinions. And he's a leader who would look for the best person to fill a job, and not give it to some loyalist hack. Hell, he might not even like the person. For leaders like that, loyalty doesn't mean you have to agree with his decisions. Granted, loyalty does mean that you don't go running to the press to whine every time you lose out on some piddly policy matter. But a good leader would understand (and expect), if you disagreed vehemently with one of his decisions, that you would leave his employment (and he'd still help you find another job).

I have no direct knowledge of this, but everything I've seen indicates that the Bush administration has indeed suffered from placing too high a premium on unblinking personal loyalty. Not a good trait.

An excellent insight, Lord Karth; I believe your take on this is more accurate than mine. Some of Bush's inner circle may have been actual cronies participating in textbook cronyism, but more of them seem to have been servile underlings. I completely agree with your last line: less than flattering, indeed.

Americans almost never resign on principle, regardless of the party, or for that matter the principle, involved. We like to fool ourselves that it is better to stay in office and retain our "effectiveness" than use it, and use it up. (Like virginity, effectiveness can apparently be used only once.)

These are excellent and insightful comments (one of the reasons I love this blog). Karth, your analysis is brilliant.

Following up on Steve's comment, "I suspect it is a very difficult decision to make when you are in the midst of a bad situation. We all have 20-20 hindsight."

I wonder if part of the problem is that when you have a sense of loyalty, and you're in the midst of a bad situation, you want to make it work. As I commented above, I was in a dysfunctional church situation, and when you are in the "inner circle" you feel like you are in a family. There's loyalty to the "father," and there's loyalty to his cause. When you see that things aren't working, you still try to make them work (even if the guy at the top is largely to blame for making mistakes). You still do the best you can to turn lemons into lemonade.

As Steve said, when faith and God are intertwined with such a situation, that makes it much harder. You assume the best of intentions among the leadership even after you start hearing "red alerts" from your conscience. You also assume a divine sanction of all the decisions that are made. In the church I was in, there was a kind of view that even if the leader is wrong, he's right, because he's closer to God, so things will work out. The attitude was, we just need to be "one" with the person taking the lead, and since he is a man of faith, God will give him wisdom and will cause everything to work out in the long run. Obviously, this can be very self-deceptive.

To make a strange analogy, it took Luther a long time to decide that the medieval Catholic church could not be reformed. In the end he was pushed out more than he left voluntarily. But he maintained the hope for a long time that his beloved church could be healed from within. (I am not intending to offend any Catholics here.) It could also be said, how many saw the same things Luther saw - corruption, abuses of authority, sale of indulgences, manipulation of trusting people - and said nothing because they were afraid, or because they didn't think it was their place? Of course, this goes for any person in an unhealthy and abusive situation - whether a marriage, a family, a church, a company, or an administration. It's just not so easy to get out of the mindset that keeps you in such a place.

On a personal note, it was not until I left that church, and spent a lot of time reflecting, that it dawned on me how bad it really was. (And this was in part from hearing the stories of others who left, who I used to regard as 'negative' or 'rebellious,' etc. when I was still there.) Now I can think, "I should have said something. I shouldn't have allowed myself to be treated that way. I shouldn't have allowed those abuses to go unanswered. I shouldn't have been quiet when someone was being humiliated. I should have warned them that their strategies were going to be harmful." But I also know that in the atmosphere I was in, better people than I just couldn't say anything, because it was hopeless.

One more thing: When you've given your life to a person, or a cause, it's hard to admit that you've wasted your life. Someone who was with Bush from the beginning is going to have a hard time acknowledging that the emperor wears no clothes. When you devote your life to something and really want to see it work, it's hard to decide that it's time to move on, and that those years didn't lead anywhere. I suspect that's also what's involved here. If you believed (as I did for awhile) that a war in Iraq would transform the region into a democratic bastion of freedom, and then you see everything fall apart, it's not easy to say, "I was duped. I was an idiot for trusting this guy. I should have listened to that voice inside me. What was I thinking?" And to move on from that is to start life all over again, which is not easy, especially when you are older, and you don't quite trust yourself anymore.

I don't envy McClellan. I don't consider him a noble figure, but I do consider him a sympathetic one.

I think the fact that Bush used talk of faith and God so often, led people to assume the best about his intentions.
Steve
Posted by: Steve | June 1, 2008 7:11 AM

Heh, it led me to assume the worst about his intentions.

Under the Nixon administration, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Dep. Atty General Ruckelshaus resigned rather than fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox. They were courageous men. It's too bad that Bush Administration officials who had qualms about the Iraq war did not do the same. McClellan wrote a tell-all book. Was that disloyal? Maybe he is simply finding some loyalty to the country now. I don't care about loyalty to Bush and neither should anyone else if it comes before loyalty to the country. He had an obligation to defend this country...not his boss. If his book allows us to avoid similar mistakes in the future it's important.

Yes, treebeard, I thought that was a really good description of what goes on in those situations, and I thank you for it. I, too, was involved in a group with similar problems. We were told that God had anointed these leaders, so it was not our place to correct them. God would correct them, if need be. A popular tactic for dealing with critics was to re-name their frustration and continued criticism as "bitterness" and "anger" and thus invalidate their comments. Another popular tactic was to hint that they had "personal problems" and spread rumors about them, implying that they were mentally ill. And, of course, anyone who quits is "disloyal" and thus must be a bad person, so you shouldn't listen to anything they say . . . even if it is true. Thus the conversation is turned from consideration of the points made by the renegade critic to condemnation of his character.

Eric W, jack, and sigaliris,
Thank you for your comments. It's amazing to me, since leaving the church I described, how many similar stories I've heard about other places. It's a shame that such a pattern is so common among church leaders.
I sincerely hope all of you have moved on and experienced healing and restoration. Much grace to you in your continued journey.

Bush's treatment of subordinates, and his demands for loyalty, remind me of the behavioral engineering of casinos. It's said that "intermittent reinforcement is the strongest reinforcement." By making [slot machine payoffs/personal approval] intermittent and unpredictable, people grow all the more slavishly devoted to pursuing it to the exclusion of other goals.

What this says about Bush's upbringing, I don't want to know. I do know that he's a terrible example of what happens when you raise a child in a home without irony.

Bush's disordered exaltation of blind loyalty created Scott McClellan.

Exactly right. I might substitute "insistence on" for "exaltation." Jacob Weisberg's "The Bush Tragedy" devastatingly documents this syndrome. In contrast, Theodore Sorensen's new book about his time with JFK makes some good points about Kennedy's post-Bay of Pigs determination to surround himself with people who would challenge him.

Since you quoted Forster, I will quote Whitman:

Have you learned lessons only of those who admired you and were tender with you and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you and disputed passages with you?

I think you can tell a great deal about someone by the way he or she responds to those who disagree. True and visionary leaders are honored, not challenged by those who challenge them. They recognize that loyalty means telling them the truth. A good thought for bloggers to keep in mind!

Forster's line does not really seem all that wicked to me, if we read it in a Burkean "little platoons" kind of way. I know that this isn't really how Forster meant it, of course. But if it comes down to a choice between your best friend or your family, and your country - if they are somehow in opposition - I'd humbly suggest that you should pick the friends & family without question. The loyalty should lie primarily with your family, friends, and your particular place, rather than the state. Your notion that it would be wrong to stick with a friend who is doing something contrary to the state (or at least this state) assumes that such acts are automatically bad. Not every conflict between an individual and the state involves "committing a crime, or doing a great wrong" (nor, for that matter, are "committing a crime" and "doing a wrong" always the same thing - sometimes they are opposite).

Just because this is how the mafia thinks doesn't necessarily make it wrong. The mafioso attitude about family is a relic of an older time, not an innovation of the criminal mind. Though admittedly, it is perverted to a degree by the criminal mind.

Forster: "It would not have shocked Dante, though. Dante places Brutus and Cassius in the lowest circle of Hell because they had chosen to betray their friend Julius Caesar rather than their country Rome." So the ultimate question is - was Brutus right?

A man with no scruples wrote a book according to his publisher's demands. This demands so much attention?

Well, his present story fits the known facts very well.

Which cannot be said of other fine people in the White House- Bush, Cheney, Rove, Miers, Rice, and Gonzalez for starters.

One of the best things that ever happened to Canada was when David Frum went south. Enjoy him, he's a winner!

Hm, you may have something there, Steve. Morphium for Food program or something. If you can't fight it, co-opt it, seems to be the going theme here. Not sure if it's as workable as the "Sons of Iraq" program, but it's worth a think. Go drop it in the Suggestion Box!

One thing you learn in war, necessity is INDEED the mother of invention.

Scott is a patriot. I am looking forward to shaking his hand at Politics and Prose in Wash, DC as he kicks off his world book tour. By exposing the Administrations plan of of propaganda and "idiotology" to control the middle east He may well have prevented the immediate down fall of the US power. Although we are rotting from the insides because of Bush failed polices and occupations. For those of you still drinking the Bush Koolaide please continue drinking it. We need people to laugh at.

JC