I have been thinking about the issue of role models in society today, whether elected officials, social media gurus, or people in the news are overly guided by personal gain, through loyalty, over principle. Though often thought to be political, conflict between loyalty and principle also can occur in the personal realm.
Many years ago, I served on my psychological association’s ethics committee as they were in need of another participant. Soon after I started, an individual from the area lodged a complaint to our committee, to my great dismay, against a psychologist with whom I had recently become friendly. That is to say we began seeing one another socially beyond the scope of our professional activities. Because the committee was short staffed, I decided not to recuse myself from the case. When the accused psychologist heard I was on the ethics committee, he asked me to do something I immediately realized was unethical and not permissible given my position. His reaction to this surprised me when he said: “Isn’t loyalty to a friend more important to you than your duty on the committee?” When I told him it was not, he became upset accusing me of belittling our friendship.
After completing our investigation, all of the members on the ethics committee agreed that the complaint was not serious enough to deserve further attention. I told my colleagues I would report the results to the psychologist in question. Upon contacting him and telling him we had dismissed the complaint against him, to my surprise, he said he no longer considered me a friend. So ended our short-lived relationship. Although initially upset by his reaction, I believed I had made the correct decision in this case and, unlike an earlier blog I had published, was able to say, No, to a request I deemed inappropriate.
Bob Woodward, the reporter for the Washington Post who with his colleague, Carl Bernstein, had written an exposé about the Watergate affair, recently wrote an article in the New Yorker, titled: A Dangerous Friendship. In the article, he discusses his close relationship with Richard G. Darman, who had been a highly influential Republican policy advisor who served several presidents, including George H.W. Bush. Woodward and Darman had become such close friends that their children and wives became a part of their bond with Darman appointing Woodward to be the godfather to his son, Jonathan. Darman felt that their close relationship would protect him from any news that might point to him as subject. Darman thought Woodard would not publish the information he had given him about Bush’s economic inconsistencies until after the election of 1992 between Bush and Clinton. The articles covered the hostility and infighting on Bush’s team on economic policy of which he was a part.
Woodward believed his job was to report factual information as a journalist doing his job. He viewed himself as a moralist. The consequences of him reporting the series of articles in the Post, not only cost him his friendship with Darman but also resulted in their wives and children now no longer able to spend time with one another. Woodward had learned a very important lesson in life: To maintain enough distance from sources to prevent a friendship from clouding one’s professional judgment, a lesson that made him more cautious of his relationships inside and outside of the business of his reporting.
A few months ago, my wife, Lisa, and I saw a play entitled: Conscience. In 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith delivered her famous “Declaration of Conscience.” At a time when McCarthy had enormous influence, as a Republican, she showed the moxy to criticize a fellow Republican. Unlike many of our senators of today, Chase Smith was not opposing McCarthy because it was politically advantageous. Rather, it was quite the opposite. Speaking out carried political risks that few Republicans would take given their fears of appearing soft on communism. After discovering how astray McCarthy had gone with his inquisition of his fellow Americans, Chase Smith argued that fear and character assassination were corroding democratic institutions. What most appropriately entailed her position was that Americans had the right to criticize, hold unpopular beliefs, and dissent without being branded traitors.
In 1956, John F. Kennedy published: Profiles in Courage. The book celebrated individuals who made politically costly choices behind the principles that embodied their thinking. One example he offered in his book was that of Edmund G. Ross. Ross was known for casting the deciding vote in the senate to acquit President Andrew Johnson in 1868. According to Kennedy, his vote preserved the office of the president and avoided more upheaval in the stormy years just after the Civil War. His vote, as he knew it, also caused him the scorn of his fellow Republicans and his political life as a senator. Like Margaret Chase Smith, what Ross did was quite the opposite of being politically advantageous.
In contrast to Kennedy’s book, Jacob Weisberg has written: Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era. The book profiles a number of Republican officials who privately expressed reservations about Trump but publicly accommodated much of the conduct they previously had condemned. Mitch McConnell, a Republican who was Senate Majority Leader from 2015 to 2021, is a case in point. After January 6, 2021, McConnell sharply criticized Trump and stated that Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the events at the Capitol. Lindsey Graham provides us with another example inasmuch as he criticized Trump’s temperament and suitability for office but later became one of Trump’s closest allies. Being a firm believer in the rights of Ukraine, if he were alive today, I wonder how he would have responded to Trump’s outright betrayal of Ukraine by removing sanctions on diesel oil that the Russians wish to export.
Marco Rubio, is a person with whom I had great respect in the past given his Cuban background and the importance he gave to human rights and freedom. However, I have found his role as Secretary of State disappointing in view of the fact that he once articulated his stand against opposing authoritarianism and dictatorships (e.g., Cuba), but now his voice is almost muted when it comes to his support of Ukraine against the Russian tyrant, Vladimir Putin. There are many others that appeared to hold their breath rather than ago against some of the policies pushed by Trump.
One notable exception was William Richard Barr who served as United States Attorney in the administration of President George H. W. Bush from 1991 to 1993 and in the first administration of President Donald Trump from 2019 to 2020. Although initially he defended many of Trump’s policies, he went against the president, much to Trump’s abhorrence, when he publicly rejected Trump’s claim of rejection fraud. Barr’s actions illustrate that he refused to allow party loyalty to supersede the importance of his understanding of constitutional law. Here he displayed conscience over loyalty.
My own bout of principle over loyalty demonstrated that the dilemma one might face in life is not always political. Many of you out there have no doubt faced some version of the same question: Do I protect my relationship or do I take the risk of losing it by upholding a principle.
What I learned in reviewing all of these examples through many decades and changes in circumstance is that the greatest threat to integrity is not malice but misplaced loyalty. This occurs when allegiance to a person, a party, or a friendship overwhelms allegiance to conscience or principle. Sadly, the last book mentioned “Profiles in Cowardice”, illustrated how our democratic institutions, that we so much cherish, have been contaminated by this lack of moral courage that puts personal interests or gain over service to our country.
