A politician who lies? They all lie.
A politician who enriches himself and his cronies at the public’s expense? Seen that movie a few times.
A politician who cheats on his wife and treats women as playthings? Situation normal.
A politician who takes credit where none is due and deflects blame when he is blameworthy? Standard.
I recently heard former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice bemoan Americans’ cynicism and distrust when it comes to politics and politicians. Can she blame us?
President Trump is only a culmination. Decades of hypocrisy and sleaze softened us up. Irony of ironies, Bill Clinton’s sexcapades with Monica Lewinsky softened us up.
During the Clinton-Lewinsky mediathon, some commentators contrasted American prudishness with French broad-mindedness when it came to extramarital affairs. Now, a French president’s tidy wife-and-mistress arrangements seem positively decorous alongside Trump’s “when you’re a star they let you do it” boast about groping women.
The local office seekers who sent us pre-primary flyers featuring warm, fuzzy photos of themselves surrounded by adoring mate, clean-cut kiddies and loyal pooch aren’t keeping up with the times. They could circulate snaps of themselves taking cash from a mob boss at an S&M club without alienating the party faithful. Or as Trump himself put it last year, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
Trump voters didn’t back him because they thought he was above the fray, the way Barack Obama seemed to be, but because he was below it. They had had their fill of the phony piety of the craven liars. Here was a brazen liar who hardly pretended to piety at all.
You’re right, he told them. The system is rigged. I know, because I play it better than anyone. Their hope was that if they put this master manipulator in charge of the rigged system, some of the spoils might trickle down to them.
Alas, spoils are like honey. They mostly stick to the fingers of those who stick their hands in the honey pot. Very little trickles down, as Trump voters should already be noticing. It might be time to turn Sarah Palin’s question on these voters and ask them how Trump’s version of “that hopey-changey thing is workin’ for ya?”
I thought of this debased leadership model when I visited the website (now defunct) of Penn State’s chapter of Beta Theta Pi, the fraternity implicated in the death of Timothy Piazza last February. The word “leadership” was splashed all over Beta’s website, but as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the only leadership in evidence the night Tim Piazza died was the kind that is concerned first and foremost with evading responsibility when things go wrong.
Consider one of the texts that chapter President Brendan Young sent to one of his fraternity brothers after they got the news of Piazza’s death. According to the grand jury presentment, Young wrote: “They could get us for giving him alcohol that contributed to his death. Also the guys taking care of him didn’t call an ambulance right away, so they could get in trouble for negligence. I just don’t know what I’m liable for as president.”
Now where on earth could he have learned that? How about from former Penn State President Graham Spanier’s email to his underlings expressing concern that they might “become vulnerable for not having reported” Jerry Sandusky to the authorities?
Yep, bad stuff can happen to you when you don’t do the right thing: The Beta Theta Pi guys have been charged with involuntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person and other crimes. Spanier and company are looking at jail time for not having reported what Mike McQueary saw in the shower (though I wouldn’t worry too much about what’s in Spanier’s wallet once that $7,500 fine is subtracted from the $600,000 salary he continued to collect after the Board of Trustees reclaimed his key to the presidential mansion in 2011).
Note that the two presidents were primarily concerned about legal problems and possibly public relations problems. Moral imperatives, which should be at the core of leadership, seem not to have been much of a consideration.
This failure of leadership is what links the crimes of Graham Spanier, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz to the alleged crimes of the brothers of Beta Theta Pi. And it is what links these local disgraces to the election of Donald Trump last November. Americans see so little leadership at any level that many of us can no longer distinguish the cynical performance of leadership from the real deal.
Last week, Penn State announced a further tightening of the screws on fraternity life. Here’s what else these young “leaders” need: better role models.
