SOMETHING REMARKABLE occurred in Seattle last week. The chief of police resigned. In the aftermath of riots that disrupted the World Trade Organization, caused millions of dollars in damage, and blackened the reputation of Seattle's police, Chief Norm Stamper did the stand-up thing and stepped down.
 Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper voluntarily resigned in the wake of riots that disrupted the World Trade Organization meeting in his city. |
The marvel of this resignation is that it was unforced. Stamper was not pushed out; Seattle's mayor says he tried to talk Stamper out of leaving. But the chief understood that it will be easier to repair the police force after the WTO debacle if someone new is at the helm. And perhaps he felt that this was a matter of honor — that since something went so badly awry on his watch, he deserved to pay a penalty.
On the same day that Stamper tendered his resignation in Seattle, a professor at Boston University tendered his. John Schulz voluntarily stepped down as chairman of the school's Mass Media, Advertising, and Public Relations Department after it transpired that he had used someone else's words in a lecture without giving credit to the author.
Nobody doubts that the lapse was unintended — he was in a rush and simply forgot to attribute the quotation. Yet Schulz himself, declaring that "the failure to attribute a source is a serious offense in a university," insisted on walking the plank.
Bravo to both men. What they did took real integrity. A pity it doesn't happen more often.
It would be refreshing if more high-ranking officials — in every field, but especially in government — resigned when honor required it. Not over a mere mistake, as in Schulz's case, but when something has truly been botched. An official who accepts responsibility for a grievous failure and demonstrates it by resigning sends several messages, all of them salutary. First, that failure carries a price. Second, that one can always behave with class. And third, that honorable men and women don't blame their underlings when something goes wrong.
When the Falklands war began in 1982, Britain's foreign secretary, Lord Carrington, resigned his post. He, as head of the foreign ministry, had failed to predict or prevent the Argentine invasion. For that failure he took personal responsibility and stepped down.
Far from destroying Carrington's reputation, his resignation only enhanced it. Two years later he became NATO's secretary-general; two years after that, he delivered the commencement address at Harvard.
When was the last time an American did what Carrington did?
In 1990, Saddam Hussein's belligerency toward Kuwait failed to set off alarms in James Baker's State Department. The US ambassador to Iraq assured Saddam that Washington had "no opinion on the Arab-Arab differences like your border disagreement with Kuwait." It was a serious blunder: Iraq invaded three weeks later. Baker stayed on as secretary of state; no doubt the thought of emulating Carrington never crossed his mind. But suppose he had resigned his office for having misjudged the situation so grievously. Americans would have applauded his integrity. They would have seen that the Bush administration held itself to the highest standards. And the allies would still have won the Gulf War.
"I made the decision," said Attorney General Janet Reno after an FBI assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, led to the deaths of nearly 80 people. "I'm accountable. The buck stops with me."
But accepting responsibility didn't mean that she was ready to accept punishment. She didn't offer to leave office. The buck may have stopped with her, but nothing changed. What kind of responsibility was that?
Occasionally American officials resign on a matter of principle. Elliot Richardson, Nixon's attorney general, quit rather than carry out an order to fire the Watergate special prosecutor. In 1980, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resigned because he opposed Jimmy Carter's decision to attempt a military rescue of the hostages in Iran. To protest the US failure to combat Serbia's murder spree in Bosnia, five State Department officials resigned between 1992 and 1994.
But shouldering the blame and resigning because something important has been badly mishandled? In our culture, that happens almost never.
Last week the $165 million Mars Polar Lander disappeared. In September, the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter vanished too, doomed by a farcical failure to convert English measurements into metric units. The agency's accident review board found that NASA is plagued with weak internal communications, poorly trained employees, and lax oversight. How bracing it would have been if, upon release of that report, someone had squared his shoulders and said, "This should never have occurred. I am responsible. I hereby resign." Instead there has been the usual: excuse-making, equivocating, and finger-pointing.
If contemporary America had a slogan, it might well be "It's Not My Fault." Taking responsibility has become a dying art. Hats off to Chief Stamper and Professor Schulz for reminding us how it's done.
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
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