Olbermann supporters deluged MSNBC with protests.  The network relented and Mr. Olbermann returned to the air two days later.  He thanked his supporters, derided the rule and dismissed any obligation to refrain from making, or publicly disclosing, his campaign contributions.

Thousands of comments were posted, including my own, which was first published on New York’s Empire Page www.empirepage.com/kernel-of-truth.

I suggested that the central issue was not whether MSNBC’s rule to promote journalistic objectivity, or the right of its commentators to fully participate in the electoral process, was more important.  But rather, whether Mr. Olbermann could have done a better job balancing both important values.

I sent him my article and suggested that he revisit the issue to discuss “the conflict between competing yet compelling duties confronting media professionals.”

He responded as follows:

Dear Mr. Brody:

I am in receipt of yours of November 22.

May I ask to what degree do you consider the inaccurate assumption of facts to be a reflection of lack of your integrity or a failure of your ethics?

Because by my count, your piece is predicated entirely on three enormous assumptions about which you could have no independent knowledge, about which you obviously did not check, and which you (erroneously) parroted from some other source.

Something comes to mind about glass houses here, but I’ll defer to you since you have decided you’re the expert.

[s] Keith Olbermann

In belittling my integrity for suggesting he could have done a better job accommodating dual duties, Mr. Olbermann was understandably defensive.  He also reflected the tendency of prominent opinion-shapers in the media and politics to disparage anyone who disagrees with them.

It is with this tone of breezy contempt that Mr. Olbermann, his colleagues on the right, and their counterparts in party politics smear each other recklessly, while maintaining their own unassailable rectitude.

By such conduct, today’s media and political celebrities reveal a fundamental paradox about integrity.  No one doubts his own integrity but is acutely aware of—and feels justified in denouncing—its breach in others.

To demonstrate this point, I ask my students as well as professional audiences whether they lack integrity or know anyone who has admitted lacking it.  The answer is almost always “no.”  But when asked if they know anyone who lacks integrity, eyes roll as if to say, “gosh, where do I start.”

This exercise reveals the common tendency of human beings to measure themselves by their best intentions while judging others by their worst deeds. People process information through the lens of idiosyncratic beliefs and self-interested motivations they can scarcely identify.

This is why most people, although believing they have a hold on integrity, are unable to identify a concrete source for their notions of it.  They attribute their moral compass to “feelings of right and wrong”, “principles of good judgment” and “fundamental values” never doubting their ability to divine such principles better than their neighbor.

It is not surprising then, that people equate integrity with rigidity of belief.  The idea that integrity lies in the boisterous assertion of one’s own conviction has spawned a vernacular of contempt that has overtaken the airwaves and Beltway: dialogue through denunciation, communication through confrontation, moral smugness, high minded pronouncements, personal infallibility and consistency at all costs.

Yet if challenged, the perpetrators of this conduct would protest that they don’t really mean to “strip mine” the terrain of civil discourse in this country but rather that they are simply conforming to the realities of  “political survival” or “ratings success”.

To explore this common self-deception that construes self- interest as a duty, I ask audiences to review a series of 30 ethical dilemmas drawn from current political and business problems, all of which pit self-interest against duty.  Then I ask whether the self-interested course constitutes “survival” or “collusion.”   That is, whether duty is excused because of justifiable self interest, or whether duty trumps self-interest.

This polarity, survival vs. collusion, was originated by psychiatrist Daniela Gitlin, M.D. (www.shrinkunwrapped.com) to separate behavior which truly serves self preservation from that which seeks to justify self interest.

The exercise reveals that the term “survival”, strictly applied, encompasses a very narrow set of circumstances, such as killing in self defense, stealing to feed a starving family, or performing labor under duress as a prisoner of war.  Participants steadily begin to see that most conduct in the name of “survival” is, in fact, an excuse to subordinate duty to self-interest.  As such, it is “collusive” in the breach of integrity.

A prime example of undermining one’s integrity in the name of survival is negative political advertising. Such campaigning brutishly manipulates the truth for the sake of winning, or “surviving” politically.   Everyone is said to hate it but it is widely practiced because it works.

Now, if you asked the politicians who deploy this practice whether the future of American democracy is more important than whether or not they get elected, they would all agree that it was.  Yet, somehow, when their own victory is at stake, they are perfectly willing to actively subvert the cornerstone duty of representative government:  truthfulness.

Similarly, the duty of truthfulness has been sacrificed by its prime guardians—the media—in favor of ideology-peddling.

The head of the Fox network, Roger Ailes for instance, has a habit of calling everyone he disagrees with a Nazi.  In so doing he sets the tone for his commentators who tend to react wholly out of proportion to circumstances, a sure sign of the self-aggrandizing, self-interested ideologue.  Not surprisingly, his network treats news events primarily as a means to advance an ideological agenda, while cynically contending—“we report, you decide”–that it is news.

MSNBC at least tried to maintain the distinction between news and ideology by enforcing an ethical rule against its most popular commentator.  That Keith Olbermann could so smugly deride his employer’s effort betrays the same contempt that Fox commentators have toward their journalistic duty.

The thread of self-interest shall always run through the fabric of our personal and professional interests. The practice of integrity does not deny the reality of complex interpersonal and economic pressures on our decisions, but it does compel us to recognize the tendency of self-interest to masquerade as duty.

Only when we recognize this default reaction, and sever it, can we take the first step toward a more sensible view of

Integrity is not the boisterous assertion of one’s own conviction but the demanding effort to identify and balance compelling but often competing duties:  self interest with truthfulness, loyalty to institutions with devotion to common good, short term return with long term benefit, individual gain with community well being, justice with mercy and so

What Stephen Carter said about civility in his book Civility is equally applicable to integrity:  “[t]he set of sacrifices we make for the sake of our common journey with others…”

If that common journey is toward a more promising American future, then control of our destiny must be wrested from the self-interested ideologues.   If we fail to do so, freedom will become indistinguishable from license.

To be sure, there will always be those special few politicians who will not take PAC money, who won’t engage in negative advertising, and who will affirm their independence from the dysfunctional rigidity of our political parties.

There will always be media professionals who view the role of truth in civil discourse as too valuable to sacrifice on the alter of financial gain.

But their efforts will be mere footnotes in the tale of national decline unless each of us revives the aspiration to build a culture of service to the common good.

If we fail to do so, what was once a common journey will seem, in retrospect, like a grim retreat from the place we used to hold most sacred.

Stuart Brody is a lawyer and adjunct professor of Ethics and Integrity at SUNY New Paltz, and a former leader of the Democratic Party in New York.   He is working on a book entitled:   The Breaking of the American Heart:  Idealism and the Future  of Integrity in America

As a professor of ethics and integrity, people often ask me, is there any difference between ethics and integrity?   Rushford Kidder, Founder and President of The Institute for Global Ethics answered the question most succinctly:  “Ethics is a regime of compliance, integrity is a culture of values.”

To illustrate the difference between ethics and integrity, let’s look at a recent event that attracted a great deal of attention in political and media circles:   Keith Olbermann’s two day suspension as a commentator for MSNBC after making contributions to political campaigns, in violation of that network’s rule.

As a matter of ethics, Mr. Olbermann’s violation is clear on its face:    In the name of avoiding the appearance of a conflict of interest, MSNBC promulgated a rule prohibiting commentators from contributing to political campaigns.  Mr. Olbermann was bound to the rule as an employee of the network and he violated it.   Breach of ethical rule, end of inquiry.

But does Mr. Olbermann’s breach of the ethical rule disqualify him from claiming integrity in making those contributions?  Or, to put it more generally, can someone breach an ethical rule and still act with integrity?

The answer is,  yes.  Of course.   Our society routinely accords respect to violators of ethical or legal rules where such breaches are committed in the name of an overriding interest or duty, such as civil disobedience, or, its counterpart in the business world, whistleblowing.

More commonly, people in workplaces across the country bend or break ethical rules every day in service of a larger duty.    Take, for example, the employee who is told by his boss that a co-worker is about to be laid off and warned to remain silent about it, or face discipline for disclosing confidential information.  Knowing that the co-worker is about to sign a mortgage he may no longer be able to afford, the employee figures out a way to warn him, despite the boss’s order and the rule against disclosure.

Issues of integrity can be more complicated than ethical ones: where ethical rules pose strict requirements to avoid conflicts of interest, integrity seeks to reconcile conflicts among interests.    And, unlike ethical prescriptions, there are no written rules.

As the layoff scenario reveals, practicing integrity is not necessarily about right vs. wrong, but about juggling two “right” values at the same time.  We know from personal experience that this balancing takes a fair amount of deliberation, and, usually involves risk.

Let’s take another example of the distinction between ethics and integrity from contemporary events:  the Wall Street broker compelled by his company to peddle inferior stocks in which the company has heavily invested.  Like the employee in the layoff situation, the brokers are confronted with a conflict between the duty of loyalty to their employers–to sell the stock and sustain the fortunes of the company–and the duty of truthfulness–to accurately advise their clients concerning the quality of the stocks they sell.

To highlight the competing duties at stake, I often ask my students to play act these scenarios in a manner that respects both interests, or duties:  that is,  to convey the truth without breaching the duty of loyalty.  The successful students manage to imply the truth—to the co-worker or brokerage client, as the case may be–through hints, humor, body language, fluctuations in intonation, and other means of indirect communication to avoid expressly violating their employer’s order.

This raises a question that goes to the heart of why people practice integrity.   Why would someone make the effort to figure out complex solutions in order to serve multiple duties, usually at some risk to themselves, rather than simply taking refuge in the easier and safer duty, in these cases, doing what the boss wants?

The answer is that people who practice integrity view self interest through a wider lens than immediate gain or personal safety, and see their responsibility—their very self esteem– in terms of a greater good.  To a larger or lesser extent, most people try to do this.  Surveys reveal that integrity is by far the most highly regarded personal quality.  Still, it is not easy.  The person who practices integrity is someone both skillful in discerning multiple duties, and willing to take calculated risks to serve them.

This concept of integrity—quietly trying to accommodate multiple duties–flies in the face of the popular belief that integrity requires a very public and uncompromising commitment to a single duty.   In his excellent article, We Don’t Need Another Hero, Harvard ethicist Joseph Badaracco debunks this notion, citing examples of how true heroes of integrity are typically modest, understated and pragmatic.  The psychiatrist, Daniela Gitlin, MD refers to this phenomenon as the “invisibility of integrity”.   Integrity, like physical health, is invisible; its absence is conspicuous.

The accommodation of duties cannot always be accomplished invisibly.   Unlike the employee in the layoff situation and the stock broker who could honor the duty of loyalty by bending, not breaking it,  Mr. Olbermann could not contribute to a political campaign without breaching the MSNBC rule against such contributions.

However, by advising MSNBC in advance of his intent to contribute, he might have negotiated a compromise of network policy that would have served both duties.  Barring such result,  by disclosing to viewers his contribution despite the rule, Mr. Olbermann could have brought the conflict between competing yet compelling duties confronting media professionals before the public in the context of his principled effort to accommodate them.

Here he chose the opposite course:  concealment without accommodation.  The employee and broker who acted integrally in the examples above did not conceal their actions to avoid taking responsibility, but rather so they could act more responsibly.   Here, Mr. Olbermann’s concealment seemed to serve no purpose other than avoiding detection.

Mr. Olbermann did not see it that way.  When he returned to the air on November 9, 2010 after his suspension, he denied knowledge of the rule, an incredible claim in view of the diligence likely to have preceded contract negotiations over so prominent a position.  Next, he derided the rule as “probably illegal” , citing no authority and completely dismissing the legitimate ethical intent of a rule aimed at bolstering public confidence in the journalistic objectivity of commentators.

He also dismissed the value of disclosing his contribution because, as a matter of public record, people would find out about it anyway.  By such patent disparagement of accountability, he was acting, as nearly all of us have at one point or another, including Presidents, like a child getting caught at something shameful and deploying the most implausible arguments that pop into mind to deflect guilt.

In Mr. Olbermann’s defense, it is difficult to discuss the finer points of integrity when caught in the cross hairs of a media frenzy.    Still,  In reacting this way, Mr. Olbermann missed an extraordinary opportunity to demonstrate a commitment to the duty of truthfulness, the breach of which his show so robustly criticizes.

His disavowal of personal responsibility illustrates another important lesson about integrity.  It is a common foible of human beings that we tend to look at our own actions in the most favorable light, while viewing the actions of others in the least favorable.   All around us, we see the breakdown of integrity,  in politics, business, sports and the media, but few people are willing to admit their own complicity in this general breakdown.

People who practice integrity are able to break that pattern.  They resist the temptation to automatically equate what they believe with what is right.    They have the determination to embark on an often uncomfortable journey to uncover their prejudices, unconscious motivations and self interested impulses and delineate duties beyond their own self interest, and then take risks to serve them.

Even those with such skills falter.  No one can practice integrity all the time.  There are no rules to guide us in the practice of integrity. The mountains of new ethical regulations promulgated in response to every latest scandal only distract us from that daunting fact.  Yet, falling out of integrity does not mean you can’t regain it.   This is why I call it a practice.

As a people, we accord great respect to those who acknowledge their breaches.   One of our distinctive American characteristics is that “everyone deserves a second chance.”   Mr. Olbermann should take that chance to re-engage his viewers about this process of trying and failing to act with integrity, and the courage to show up and do it better the next time.

By doing so, he will be making a contribution far more durable than a financial one to his favorite candidates:  depositing rather than withdrawing from the public bank of integrity.

Stuart Brody is a lawyer and adjunct professor of Ethics and Integrity at SUNY New Paltz, and a former leader of the Democratic Party in New York.   He is working on a book entitled:   The Breaking of the American Heart:  Idealism and the Future  of Integrity in America

Naturally, then, it is tempting to propose the obligatory five, ten or twenty-five point plans in hopes of immediate results from sweeping reforms. The other commentators to this Roundtable have hit on the correct strategies. They are obvious. By saying that, I don’t mean to disparage the skill it takes to identify them, but rather to stress that coming up with good policy choices is the least of three major challenges facing a Governor. The other two are controlling the expectations of an impatient public, and dealing with self interested politicians who pass upon his programs.

Watching the collapse of the Obama Administration reveals two things about the electorate which may be instructive to the new governor: First, the deeper the problem the more impatient the electorate; second, the public appears to have great difficulty appreciating the value of long term solutions. To this difficult mix, add the current President’s suprising inability to guide the public to either patience or understanding. I believe New Yorkers are more patient, and the Governor-elect more skillful, but the key will be constant interaction with the public to remind us of the ultimate benefits of a modest and long term corrective course focusing on one or two key objectives only.

The other and perhaps more difficult challenge, is dealing with the politicians who have proved over and over that they cannot resist the opportunity to assert personal interest over good policy. Like their colleagues in major American businesses, they seem genetically programmed to seek short term gain at the expense of a long term future. The results to both our economy and political culture have been catastrophic.

Here, the starting point for the Governor-elect is not an elaborate new ethics law which, like any regulation, can be easily circumvented, but to re-incentivize elected officials generally toward the common good. This probably means taking steps to substitute the current party system with a new alignment of interest. If the Governor can find a dozen or so brave souls—undoubtedly with safe seats—to begin the process, he and they might inaugurate a refreshing new political identity, not as Democrats vs. Republicans but as proponents of sound long term solutions vs. quick rag tag fixes.

The challenges are difficult, but the promise is great because this Governor comes to Albany superbly seasoned and thoroughly aware of the problems. He has not squandered the popularity gained at the AG’s office by unrealistic campaign promises or constraining private deals. So, once again, we have reason to believe that the right thing can be done by our leaders, and that the people, by supporting them, can ennoble our beleaguered democracy.

                 A three part series 

                             Part One:  Outrage in the Age of Stalemate

Two weeks ago, Tea Party members won some big victories across the country, including right here in New York with Paladino’s victory.   Commentators have treated this event as a radical turn in American politics.  It may well be, because for the first time, Karl Rove and John Boehner seem like moderates, a potential windfall to their images.   

For their part, despite early indications of Tea Party popularity, Democrats are expecting that fear of Tea Party extremism will draw moderates back to their fold and forestall a national electoral calamity this fall.

However, the apparent radicalization of politics by the Tea Party may not necessarily lead to a significant turn in political alignment, but rather a repetition of the cycle that has doomed third parties throughout American history: a quick flame out, and ultimate return of voters back home to the mainstream parties.

The difference this time is that millions of Americans have realized that the main parties do not embody a broad enough home base to return to.    Their moderate centers were hijacked long ago.  For decades they have operated on stalemate-yielding, anger-producing, myth-creating ideologies that have sidelined moderates and crumpled traditional American idealism.    Let’s look at the Republicans first.

Distilled to its essence, Republicans hold that wealth itself, not opportunity, is an inalienable right, and that its acquisition confers conclusive proof of legitimacy. To the radicals of mainstream Republicanism, interference with the manner in which wealth is acquired or disposed of (regulation and taxation)  is all but outside  the proper scope of government and a threat to every freedom-loving man woman and child in America.  This winner-take-all mentality has supplanted the traditional identification of moderate Republicanism with the healthy competition of free enterprise and the primacy of “level playing field”l opportunity.

The Democratic “mainstream” has been similarly radicalized:  it holds that every loser in the transaction of capitalism deserves redress and it is the duty of government to provide it. The pursuit of economic self-interest, although interesting in theory, tends, in practice, to degenerate into greed.  Accordingly, the structures of business should not be left to the invisible hand of the market, but rather, the benevolent morality of governmental planners. These radicals have shifted focus from opportunity to entitlement as the driving force in economic and social policy.

Evidence for the radicalization of political parties lies in the cult-like ferocity with which party partisans treat each other in the corridors of  Congress:  dialog through denunciation, communication through confrontation, insistence on personal infallibility, consistency at all costs, and the equation of rigidity of belief with personal integrity. 

The two parties have so radicalized American politics, that splinter groups professing ideological purity find little ground to stand on.  For instance, none of the Tea Party candidates has policy views very different than mainstream(radical)Republican nostrums on taxes, deficits, regulation and judicial restraint.  In the absence of policy, the only available terrain for them to maneuver is the playing field of outrage.  Tea Partiers, like most fringe groups, are fueled by, and fuel, outrage.   In the age of stalemate, outrage passes for policy, and, for a while at least, masquerades as reason.

Few people, other than political leaders, could get away with this kind of nasty, boisterous and sociopathic conduct.  In our regular lives, we Americans tend to be rather reasonable people:  men and women who confirm our capacity for common decency by everyday acts of grace, modesty and humility, in our homes, at work, and in our communities. This moderation is both our salvation and our dilemma.

 In the past, these “centrist” values have coalesced to beat back the ego bullies, the anger mongers and myth peddlers, and may do so this fall.  But now the danger is that nearly the entire so called “mainstream” political class is characterized by such habits.  Americans are slowly being starved of the oxygen that democracy needs to survive, not by the Tea Party, but by the Republican and Democratic parties.

Idealism, in contrast to the cultish ideologies of our political parties, is a call to action based on the widest possible commonality of beliefs.  The radical ideologies of the parties and their angry offshoots like the Tea Party constrict this vital artery of political circulation by ever more narrow interpretations of our beliefs.

The fact that the political parties thrive on such means compels the question whether the feverish emotional pitch of party warfare is not simply the byproduct of ideological debate but rather a staged conflict to conceal consensus on matters upon which the parties really agree:  protecting the money consolidators—financial services, drug, insurance, telecommunications, and oil companies—who fuel the campaign coffers of Democrats and Republicans alike.  The parties never seem to experience gridlock when the interests of these conglomerates are concerned.  Isn’t it true that most Americans believe that, when it comes to political process, “the fix is in”?

Whether you believe the parties are simply out of control or, quite in control but chose to confuse us by their staged dysfunction in order to better serve elite economic interests, there is no denying this fact:  the current radicalism of mainstream politics breeds outrage which in turn subverts moderation, prolongs stalemate and presages the forfeiture of common goals and purpose.  

So, we are left with this crucial question:    When the Tea Party’s voice of outrage runs its course, will it drive the electorate back to the illusory refuge of moderation represented by the two parties or force a centrist reconstitution of American politics.   The resuscitating air of moderation that has sustained us in earlier times must be injected back into our politics if we are to endure.   

Coming:  Part II  Reviving the Culture of Idealism in America

Stuart Brody is adjunct professor of Ethics and Integrity at SUNY New Paltz, and a former leader of the Democratic Party of New York.   He is working on a book entitled:   The Breaking of the American Heart:  Idealism and the Future  of Integrity in America

It has become a cliché that the New York state legislature is dysfunctional.  And to most observers, the failure to pass a budget is just another manifestation.  I dissent from this view.   The State legislature has actually been quite busy, and with important matters.   It is, definitely, functional. 

For instance, within the last year, the legislature passed ethics reform (although the Governor vetoed it), rules reform enabling bipartisan participation in Senate committee leadership, some public authorities law modifications, Rockefeller Drug Law reform, charter school reform, government consolidation legislation and no fault divorce among other things.

The problem is not with the lack of effort of these legislators.  The problem is that they seem unable to tackle really tough things, like the budget.  But, before we criticize our legislators too severely, it may be useful to observe this tendency in our own lives:  to be engaged in respectable effort but come up short on matters of enduring value. 

Most of us occupy ourselves for days, weeks, even years with the apparent demands of everyday life, but find excuses to avoid  more durable investments, such as cultivating closer relationships with our children, long term family financial planning, or researching new job opportunities that can increase our personal satisfaction.

In both cases, in government and in our personal lives, the failure to address matters of real value leads to profound personal dissatisfaction, and, ultimately to blame, usually of others.  In politics, the vehicle for diverting personal responsibility to blaming others, is the political party.  More on this in a moment.

Let’s first ask, how is it possible that serious people in Albany can be so intensely engaged but fail to discharge the truly urgent.   Many pundits say it is the deteriorating ethical environment in Albany.  I’m not so sure of this.   Seriously, does a Governor’s use of complimentary Yankee tickets or a lobbyist picking up a legislator’s tab for dinner have that much to do with the systemic failure to discharge the public good?

No, there is a void in Albany bigger than lack of ethics.  It is lack of imagination, or to put it another way, the absence of a sense of purpose strong enough to take risks on behalf of the common good.  Imagination and risk are at the heart of our success as a nation.  The willingness to embark on a journey through unmapped territory is an American hallmark.  

Examples abound in our history:   Jefferson’s plan for a network of roads and bridges throughout the Louisiana Purchase, the Erie Canal, Lincoln’s launching of the Transcontinental Railroad during the depths of the Civil War, and his land grant colleges plan, and the Homestead Act, Teddy Roosevelt’s system of national parks, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the GI Bill, the national highway system, social security, the Peace Corps, the SUNY university system, and New York’s pioneering investment in hydroelectric power fifty years ago. 

These towering achievements occurred at a time when people looked to the government for big ideas and the government delivered.   Government was a partner with the people, igniting their imagination, promoting their aspirations and safeguarding their interests.  Today, no one expects much from the government and the government obliges.  But the blame for this situation cannot be placed solely at the doorstep of today’s politicians.

The genesis of this culture of governmental degradation was the ridicule heaped on it by Ronald Reagan.  The “great communicator” communicated the devastating message that the government’s bank of big ideas was bankrupt.  Placing the blame for our problems on the government satisfied those who like to blame others, but it left a permanent scar on the American psyche.  “Morning in America”,  Reagan’s invocation to a resurgence of national pride, has turned into a nightmare of unrequited dreams for our collective future.

Reagan’s successors, including Clinton who ratified financial reforms that led to our current distress, but especially Bush II, contributed to the dislodgement of government from key roles in protecting the people’s collective right to honest investment advice from brokers, responsible bank use of assets, the safety of our food, the purity of our water, the reliability of our energy, dependability of our travel, the sanctity of our environment, and so forth. 

At the bottom of this slide we find ourselves in an Orwellian reality where government is not the big brother, but where business is the abusive father.   The wreckage of our economy done by the financial industry has been, perhaps, unimaginably, surpassed by the oil industry’s wreckage of our environment.  These are acts done with shattering displays of nonchalance and smug self assurance that would have been unthinkable thirty years ago.

Distaste of government is so great, that federal responses to these financial and environmental catastrophes have been hesitant and ineffective.  And here at home, in New York, the government’s response to the budget crisis has been similarly ineffectual.   No political party will allow its members to take a lead on a budget that makes cuts or contains new spending, even on critical investments, if it involves new indebtedness. 

Because the political parties cannot be counted upon to deliver solutions to big problems, Lt. Governor Ravitch suggested that a Financial Review Board be constituted to make these decisions.  Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Cuomo, while endorsing some of these points, was right to point out that the budget process cannot be subcontracted out to a non-elected financial board. 

So the question becomes, how to de-politicize the process that depends on people elected through the political process.  Well, first of all, it doesn’t take much to see that “five men in a room” is not a reliable way of producing a budget.  This is because the duty of party leaders to advance their party’s tactical advantage over the other party, is greater than their duty to the good of the collective, i.e. passing a budget.  Until the priorities are reversed, we’ll never get an on time budget, or a gimmick free one. 

The burden of passing a budget, and ultimately, to curing the so called “dysfunction” in Albany must fall on individual legislators breaking free of party.  Clearly, these men and women, nearly all of them, retain a passion for the common good despite partisan politics, and a willingness to act courageously if necessary, despite party loyalty.  It’s just that the gross warfare of politics has squelched these positive commitments.

Still, there are probably enough of them left in both parties, who, secure in their districts, committed to their constituents, or just plain fed up are willing to come forward to produce a budget.  Someone or some group needs to start the process, in essence creating a separate power structure, outside of party, to assert non partisan leadership on budgetary matters.  Who will that person or persons be?

The risks are substantial, but the rewards are great for those willing to step forward.  New Yorkers may lend their voices loudly to the national cries of anti-governmentalsim, but they, like their countrymen, are not without the basic values that continue to motivate the best voices among us:  those who find a way to value the truth above competing duties of political loyalty, or short term political advantage at the expense of the long term interests of our State.   

Any such political leader stepping forward is likely to find appreciation, not rebuke at the hands of his or her constituents, provided he or she acts truthfully in explaining his purpose.  That is the opportunity and responsibility awaiting individual legislators who claim any real commitment to reform.  It just takes a little imagination.

Stu Brody is former Chair of the New York State Democratic Rural Conference and teaches Business and Political Ethics at SUNY New Paltz.

By Stuart H. Brody

The political landscape sustained another aftershock last week when Evan Bayh called it quits in the United Sates Senate.  More jarring than the news of his retirement was the uncommonly frank terms in which he criticized the partisanship that had immobilized the political world he inhabited for twelve years.

Just a few weeks early, Massachusetts voters expressed a similar frustration by electing Scott Brown to the Senate, and in the process ended President Obama’s supermajority, doomed safe passage of his signature domestic issue, and all but buried the promising story line of his early Presidency.

Seeking relief from the collapse of his leadership brought on by partisanship, the President’s State of the Union called for a revived commitment to the “bold action and big ideas” that had fueled previous national triumphs over adversity.  Yet he must surely have known, as Senator Bayh lamented, that the men and women listening to him in the House Chamber that night are incapable of providing it.

Our Founding Fathers dazzled the world with their inventiveness and inspired two centuries of descendants to sustain their noble work by collaboration and compromise.   These days, our political parties, like warring sects of a once common religion, have sunk into the delusion of encrusted myth, nearly incapable of rational action.

The Republican myth asserts that the “market” has the power to correct all economic abuses despite overwhelming evidence of its blindness to civil rights, labor fairness, anti trust violations, natural resource exploitation, securities fraud, campaign finance abuse, food and drug security and the list goes on.  In their free market zeal they have elevated cutthroat competition to the level of virtue and have thus abandoned not only the true tenets of free enterprise but their trust in a government that has shown remarkable power to educate, heal, invent and build.

The Democrats cling with equal fervor to the myth of government as the prime societal force for good, with the power to ameliorate human nature and deliver us to the threshold of utopia.  Democrats act as if by taxing regulating and spending they can soften every sharp blow of capitalism.  Democrats foist on government these expectations of moral achievement while decrying the very vehicle—our free enterprise system—that has delivered incalculable economic improvement.

The extremism of these political ideologies stymies cooperation and subverts our collective aspirations.   In asserting their agendas, and fueled by the fringe groups that finance them, our Senators and Representatives behave in the halls of Congress like members of a radical cult:  dialog through denunciation, communication through confrontation, insistence on personal infallibility, consistency at all costs and the identification of personal integrity with rigidity of belief.

And so, the chasm of American politics gets wider, the excuses for not acting more convoluted, the blame more fierce, the problems deeper and the solutions more distant. 

This past year has made clear that even the charisma of a natural born leader –that old standby of American political revival-is insufficient to bridge this gulf.   Expecting that President Obama can reinvent himself to cure this turmoil is unrealistic and deepens the cycle of disappointment.

Nor can the breakthrough that he envisioned at the State of the Union come from some magical unity over policy.  Current economic stresses, looming environmental catastrophe, the chokehold of dependence on foreign oil, freelance terrorism, two endless wars and the dawning realization that we are becoming number 2 in the world have been insufficient to bring us together politically.

No, the breakthrough will come neither from charismatic repackaging of Presidential rhetoric nor magical unification around policy.  If there is to be a breakthrough, it must come from ordinary men and women, or, from a politician acting like one.

In our individual lives, not as Americans, but as human beings, we bridge our differences by simple gestures:  an act of kindness, forgiveness, and generosity, often without expectation of reciprocation or guarantee of success.   This is the real source of American greatness:  men and women who confirm our impulse for common decency by grace, modesty and humility, as parents, at work, and in their communities. 

Americans like this were so memorably depicted in the movies we flocked to for inspiration during the last depression and from parents and teachers who instilled in us the belief that you could get ahead in America and do it honestly.  Their memory is all but drowned out by the cult of egoism all around us, in sports, business, the media, religion, and, of course, politics. 

Our breakthrough as a people will not come from the podium of political calculation but from the well of personal commitment, from an ordinary person who transcends politics in a simple but extraordinary act. 

Like Rosa Parks refusing to walk to the back of the bus, perhaps a United States Senator will take a few steps across the aisle, pull a colleague from the rubble of partisanship and start leading the nation out of this ego-drenched, cliché-ridden, finger-pointing culture that threatens to permanently squelch our national spirit.  

That would be a story line we might be proud to tell our children when we teach them about what America did in the depression.

—-

Stu Brody is former Chair of the New York State Democratic Rural Conference and teaches Business and Political Ethics at SUNY New Paltz.

By Stuart H. Brody

Last week, Martha Coakley failed to execute a political assignment so routine that few people gave any thought to the enormous consequences of failure; that is, before it occurred.   She was defeated in her Senate race by Scott Brown whose victory may have spelled the doom of the health care bill that had been the life’s work of his predecessor and the signature domestic issue of his President.  The next day, President Obama shed his customary equilibrium and began attacking the banks in a populist imitation of Brown.

This is but the latest rotation in a cycle of disappointment that has become a tradition in American politics:  expectation of great leadership, brought low by partisanship, followed by stalemate and renewed clamor for deliverance by a fresh messenger of change. 

Last night, in his State of the Union last week, The President sought relief from this story line in his reminiscence of our ancestors pulling together in times of economic upheaval and transformation, to “respond with bold action and big ideas”. Our founding itself was the most remarkable transformation and one of the biggest ideas in history.   The founders dazzled the world with their inventiveness and inspired two centuries of descendants to sustain their noble work by collaboration and compromise.  

From what source though, does the President expect a modern revival of sacrifice and devotion to the common good?    He asked for it from the politicians assembled in the House Chamber last night, but he must know that they are incapable of providing it.   Like warring sects of a once common religion, the parties have sunk into the delusion of encrusted myth.

The Republican myth is the assertion that the “market” has the power to correct all abuses despite overwhelming evidence of its blindness to civil rights, labor fairness, anti trust violations, natural resource exploitation, securities fraud, campaign finance abuse, food and drug security and the list goes on.  In their free market zeal they have elevated cutthroat competition to the level of virtue and have thus abandoned not only the tenets of free enterprise but their faith in a government that has shown remarkable power to educate, heal, invent and build.

The Democrats cling with equal fervor to the myth of government as the prime societal force for good, with the power to ameliorate human nature and deliver us to the threshold of utopia.  Democrats act as if by taxing regulating and spending they can soften every blow of capitalism.  Democrats foist on government these expectations of moral improvement while decrying the very vehicle—our free enterprise system—that has delivered incalculable economic improvement.

The extremism of these political ideologies stymies cooperation and subverts our collective aspirations.   In asserting their agendas, our Senators and Representatives behave in the halls of Congress like members of a radical cult:  dialog through denunciation, communication through confrontation, insistence on personal infallibility, consistency at all costs and the equation of rigidity of belief with personal integrity. 

And so, the chasm gets wider, the excuses for not acting more convoluted, the blame more fierce, the problems deeper and the solutions more distant. 

This past year has made clear that even the charisma of a natural born leader –that old standby of American political revival-is insufficient to bridge this chasm.   Expecting that President Obama can reinvent himself to cure this turmoil is unrealistic and deepens the cycle of disappointment.

Nor can the breakthrough come from some magical unity over policy.  Current economic stresses, looming environmental catastrophe, the chokehold of dependence on foreign oil, freelance terrorism, two endless wars and the dawning realization that we are becoming No. 2 in the world have been insufficient to bring us together politically.

No, the breakthrough will not come from some charismatic repackaging of Presidential rhetoric or magical unification around policy because the politicians, their parties and their egos have become too inflexible to bend to reality.   The breakthrough must come from ordinary men and women, or, from a politician acting like one.

In our individual lives, not as Americans, but as human beings, we bridge our differences by simple gestures:  an act of kindness, forgiveness, and generosity, often without expectation of reciprocation or guarantee of success.   This is the real source of American greatness:  men and women who confirm our impulse for common decency by grace, modesty and humility, as parents, at work, and in their communities. 

Americans like this were so memorably depicted in the movies we flocked to for inspiration during the last depression and from parents and teachers who instilled in us the belief that you could get ahead in America and do it honestly.  Their memory is all but drowned out by the cult of egoism all around us, in sports, business, the media, religion, and, of course, politics. 

Our breakthrough as a people will not come from the podium of political calculation but from the well of personal commitment, from an ordinary person who transcends politics in a simple but extraordinary act. 

Like Rosa Parks refusing to walk to the back of the bus, perhaps a United States Senator will take a few steps across the aisle, pull a colleague from the rubble of partisanship and start leading the nation out of this ego-drenched, cliché-ridden, finger-pointing culture that threatens to permanently squelch our national spirit.  

That would be a story line we might be proud to tell our children when we teach them about what America did in the depression.

A call for new ethics laws, like many reform initiatives, are born of moral outrage after the commission of highly publicized abuses.  Yet, precisely because they are reactive, these measures often fail to identify the real problems or fall short of correcting them.  Like new airport security checks taken in reaction to the latest terrorist threat rather than in anticipation of future ones, expedient half measures deplete public confidence rather than bolster it.

New Yorkers understand that ethical rules don’t make people ethical.  At best, such rules identify a narrow subset of conflicts of interest and set legal boundaries around them.  They do not eliminate conflicts, or guide public officials in the manner of justly resolving them.  That skill belongs to the world of integrity.

Integrity, is a broad personal commitment, not a narrow legal compulsion, to act in a manner beneficial to the community as a whole rather than what might otherwise appear in one’s immediate personal interest.   The founding fathers understood the tension between the individual pursuit of happiness, proclaimed as a natural right in the Declaration of Independence, and the promotion of the general welfare which is a central mission of the Constitution.

The problem is that politicians, like most people, tend to identify the general welfare with their own personal happiness.     In surveys on ethics, most respondents say that the word “ethical” means “what my feelings tell me is right”.  Relying on feelings is a pretty shaky way to fashion a moral structure.

To illustrate this, in another survey, 98% of Americans surmised that they were ”a better than average” judge of character.  Obviously 48% of them are wrong.  On any question involving right or wrong, one’s “feelings” will be as often wrong as right.

A basis more substantial than instinct to “do the right thing”–which everyone seems to believe they possess–is needed to induce political leaders to accord “the right thing” as much thought as rewarding campaign contributors, re-election maneuvering, party leadership ambitions and pecuniary gain.

Something more substantial than an ethics pledge will be necessary to curb the way our nation’s leaders act in the halls of Congress:  demonizing opponents, dialog through denunciation, communication through confrontation, consistency at all costs and the equation of integrity with rigidity of beliefs, usually their own.

It simply can’t be that politicians have no capacity to do the right thing.  They are capable of introspection, discernment of duty, personal commitment and taking risks for the common good–essential elements of integrity.  That’s why many of them went into politics in the first place.  Yet this impulse is all too often blunted by the cold, hard enforcing steel of partisanship and highlights the need, not for new ethics laws, but ways to induce our political leaders to realign along fault lines of integrity rather than political ones.

For the moment though, it seems as if the only game in town is party politics and we the people are sidelined.  Is it any wonder then, that Joe Bruno, the ultimate team captain in this brutal sport quoted Yogi Berra in assessing his fate?  “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Ironically, though, he may have unwittingly struck an important chord:  we’d better pray it ain’t over because we have a long way to go to rescue our democracy.

Stu Brody is the former Chair of the Democratic Rural Conference and founder of www.integrityintensive.com, an  integrity training resource for young political leaders and public affairs professionals.

The Common Weal in America Has Run Dry?

By Stuart H. Brody

Comments of Stu Brody to Empire Page Roundtable  October 2009.

The question posed to this Roundtable is whether Americans should willingly pay for public benefits of which they will never partake.  In my mind most striking aspect of this question is that it needs be asked at all.  Not that a democratic people shouldn’t debate the role of their commitments to the nation’s collective well being, but that the debate in modern America has taken such a narrow and selfish turn. 

Our very founding and survival was built on enormous compromises to serve union and freedom, even if particular interests were ill served in the short run.   We can point to the Golden Age of the Senate when Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, and others, stitched together complex regional accommodations to keep the nation together—and allow it to grow—forestalling war for thirty years.

We have a history of sharing the privileges and bounty of our rich nation freely in order to expand prosperity.   DeToqueville marveled at what he termed our volunteerism and boosterism.  Still, today, you can hardly visit an American town or county that does not boast large community service calendars and festivals for public entertainment and community promotion.

We are also a massively generous people–by far the highest per capita contributors to charity in the world, notwithstanding our collective skepticism about forking over tax money each April.

I believe, that deep down, most people hold as one of the blessed privileges of freedom, the free partaking of the grandeur that our wealth has produced. 

The parks of our great cities and our great public monuments and museums offered the world weary urban poor a moment of tranquility in which to nurture their dreams, dreams which, by God’s grace, were realized by so many.

Walking in a national forest, as others have commented, imparts a power of belonging that is unmatched, and diminished, if you have to pay for it.

Yet we live now in a time of stinginess.  From Congress with its earmarks, to Wall Street with its bonuses, the rule of the day is “take the money and run” before anyone catches up with you.

Just weeks ago, Senator John Kyle from Arizona actually complained in a Senate Committee debate on health care that he was required to pay for a health care policy that included maternity benefits since he would never use them.

In our own state, the best plans to fund the  MTA which fuels our most potent economic machine—the City of New York—fell victim to the narrowest of selfish interests in our legislature.

Like a family bitterly divided over a contested will, in America, the bonds of common devotion have been loosened by fierce and mindless emotion, and often it’s our politicians leading this desperate movement.  Too many cloak narrow interests with passionate rhetoric while subjecting anyone who disagrees with them to intemperate and often vile denunciation. 

How can such men and women summon the grace and generosity to provide for the general welfare and inspire others to achieve what Jefferson called the most noble ambition of free men:  pursuing individual happiness while contributing to the collective well being.

Perhaps they can learn something of public courage from Supervisor Mary Ellen Keith of tiny Franklin, New York who was voted out of office twenty years ago for spending the last remaining federal revenue sharing funds to purchase land for a park, instead of putting it in to the General Fund, because she wanted “something lasting.” 

Now, in her eighties, and freshly returned to office, she spends every summer morning making 100 sandwiches for the sons and daughters of her electors, grateful for her foresight.

However, there is another temptation to which he is apparently vulnerable and from which his wealth has not shielded him: the charms of eternal power.

At the outset of his tenure, Bloomberg promised he wouldn’t run for more than two terms. He repeatedly emphasized his support of the City’s term limits rule, and once called any effort to revise the limits “disgusting.” Yet as the end of his second and presumably final term loomed, he retracted this view, concluding that he is indispensable to the people of New York.

The mayor’s 11th hour conversion from supporter of term limits, to opponent, has provoked anemic opposition. Fifty city council members, or at least the 29 voting to allow him to run for a third term, concluded that their will, or the bending of it to Mr. Bloomberg’s, was a fair exercise of their legislative power, even in the face of two referenda by the voting public to the contrary.

Leading advocates of term limits, like the redoubtable Ron Lauder, who, for better or worse became the public face of term limits, lost his zeal for the fight, and caved. The teachers union, presumably ill disposed to the mayor because of his steadfast support for chancellor Joe Klein, also backed down from a resolution opposing Bloomberg’s bid.

Mayor Bloomberg now finds himself sailing calm waters in the port of his ambition. In the wake of the recent dismissal by the United States Justice Department of a civil rights challenge to the third term, the tepid response in Albany to a Senate bill restricting his effort, and his endorsement by the City’s Republican parties even after the Mayor spurned them to run for President as an Independent, no real obstacles remain to Bloomberg’s running for a third term. Incredibly, this startling power grab appears inevitable.

So the question becomes, if no one seems to care that he’s riding roughshod over his own promises, the judgment of his fellow New Yorkers in two referenda, and the resulting law limiting him to two terms, then what is really so wrong about what he’s doing? Or to put it another way: if the leaders of our democracy don’t seem to care, are his actions really a threat to democracy?

They are, and here’s why: because politicians are not supposed to change their minds in bald pursuit of their self interest, and they’re also not supposed to maintain power for its own sake. Sound old fashioned? Self-restraint in the face of the temptations of power is what men and women of integrity do. They do it to inspire and maintain public confidence in the capacity of elected representatives to do right by the people that elected them. Each time a politician disappoints that expectation, we lose a little more confidence in a system we were taught once to believe in.

Faith in the political system is no less important to our spirit as free men and women, then confidence in the financial system is to our economic well being. We are living in the painful reality of what happens when people lose confidence in the financial system. Yet the same collapse has been occurring, if more gradually and less violently, to our political system over the last 30 years.

After the loss of anything precious, we lose daily touch with the value of what we’ve lost. We close off the space where our hopes once nourished our optimism. A plurality of New York City voters — 46% — believe the term limit extension approved by the City Council for the benefit of Mr. Bloomberg is not the right thing for the city, yet they believe his continued service of mayor is.

Clearly, then, there is a wide gulf between rectitude and convenience, and this gap is the breeding ground of cynicism.  It takes a leader to close the gap not exploit it. While claiming his indispensability for leadership, the mayor forfeited its most essential aspect: respect for the people’s confidence in their leaders.

Yet, even if he wins in November, the mayor’s resulting political harvest may be a barren one. The people have a funny way of rebelling against those who manipulate the rules, especially these days, when the millions who obey them are now compelled to bail out the few who consistently broke them. Explosive reactions in democracies are often set up on a long fuse. Last November’s national election is a case in point.

New Yorkers may not rebel now, nor at the polls in November, but they’ll get there, as the problems of transportation, education and public safety are seen by New Yorkers in the new light of the mayor’s opportunism.  Just another politician is how he’ll be viewed;  a fitting return on Mayor Bloomberg’s investment in the cynicism of the electorate but a disappointing conclusion to a career that at once seemed so fresh and honest.