An alarming number of people in the current administration have resigned while under investigation for ethical and legal violations, or are currently charged with various crimes or breaking rules governing elected or appointed members of the administration. The ever-expanding list begins with Michael Flynn and does not end in the foreseeable future.
For example, think of Kellyanne Conway recently and repeatedly flouting the Hatch Act on the White House grounds. (The Hatch Act prohibits employees in the executive branch from engaging in political activities.)
In “Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary,” I came across this prescient passage (As the Nixon administration was dissolving under pressure of Watergate in 1973, Moynihan wrote this to the president):
“What struck me most, and alarmed me most, about the almost always decent men who came to Washington with, or in your train, was how little they knew of government, and especially of the standards of personal behavior required of men in power. They had acquired . . . an oppositional frame of mind which much too easily assumed that squalid behavior was common rather than rare in Washington, and they were all too ready to judge what would be required of them by reference to what they thought others did, rather than what they know ought to be done. This was a failure of education and imagination.”
That is an apt description of what we have now. In the current administration, the squalid trumps standards of personal behavior again and again, starting at the top. Endure this for now if we must, but let’s vote for someone better at setting and upholding high standards of conduct next chance we get.
David Nyberg
Bath
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