Resignable Offenses

During the Clinton impeachment imbroglio, I suggested Americans needed to think about constitutionally resignable offensive. European politicians who screw up resign. Americans might benefit by following their example. Lying about sex, even under oath, may not be a high crime or misdemeanor under the constitution, but Clinton’s behavior was sufficiently disgraceful to warrant resignation. Government officials, in this view, have a legally unenforceable constitutional obligation to resign under two conditions. First, they are responsible for a clear policy disaster that casts doubt on their professional competence and judgment. Second, they engage in misbehavior that casts doubts on their professional integrity and capacity to achieve their policy aims. Getting votes for more progressive policies is difficult enough without having to support candidates with stupid extraneous baggage.

Members of the Bush Administration have clearly committed constitutionally resignable offenses. The prison abuse scandal is an obvious example. The confident claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction is another. The way one takes responsibility for these fiascos is not by blithely declaring, "my bad," but by resigning. That no member of the Bush cabinet has resigned indicates they do not regard the prison abuse scandal or the failure of find weapons of mass destruction as serious policy mistakes.

Dan Rather should resign for the same reasons. The evidence seems overwhelming that the Killian memos were sufficiently dubious as to make their publication a gross abuse of professional judgment. Doing so has done great damage to the credibility of CBS and distracted political attention from what a responsible network ought to consider the main issues of the day. Rather’s actions were unprofessional, they have ruined his professional reputation, and weakened causes he may have thought he was promoting. The decent thing to do is leave.

Rathergate is also an episode in stunning political stupidity. Suppose I forge a memo in which Bush’s high school teacher complains that George doesn’t pay much attention to British poetry. What’s the point? Does anyone out there need convincing that our president as a lad was probably not a keen student of British poetry? Or that he probably took advantage of his pull during Vietnam? Does either have any relevance to public issues? Maybe if Rather goes, someone at CBS might actually investigate administrative responsibility for the prison abuse scandal, or allegations of torture at Guantanamo Bay. Maybe not. Anyone heard the rumor that John Kerry bragged about a B+ on a paper that actually received a B/B+. Fox News here we come.