With polls showing the President suffering from a serious case of the droops in the integrity department, the White House moved quickly to restore its choir boy image. Everybody who works there will have to take an ethics course. “No exceptions,” we are given to understand. Whether that includes Mr. Bush is not known but for all you Rove haters, Karl is supposed attend.
News of this latest attempt to restore Sunday school standards in the White House reached the outside world via a memo snuck out to a Washington Post reporter by a heroic whistle blower and/or leaker-snitcher, depending on your ethical standards. The memo says that, "the White House counsel's office will conduct a series of presentations next week that will provide refresher lectures on general ethics rules, including the rules governing the protection of classified information."
So how is this going to work? Are they going to herd this group of hardened political operatives into one of those plush rooms and feed them The Ten Commandments?
Maybe, but a good administration ethicist would be able to demonstrate that there’s of wiggle room aplenty in the Decalogue. Take the rule about not killing. Since it’s soldiers who do the killing, not White House staff, Operation Iraqi Democracy can continue without ethical interruption.
Nor do the ten rules have anything to say about truth telling. If the White House tells the public that they have turned over a new moral leaf and from now on they are going to live according to the Commandments, they can still lie their heads off.
It says that “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his intern, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's.” Zoning won’t let you keep an ox in town and it doesn’t say anything about not coveting his oil. So we’re home free on that one, too, as long as the boys don’t stare too long at the neighbor’s wife’s cleavage.
Rule number eight says no stealing, but there’s a work-around here also. No stealing, but bribes are not covered nor kick-backs nor fat jobs later on.
Did you ever read a more intelligently designed set of rules? God knew what he was doing. He’s made it so Bush II will go down as number 1 in ethics. Wait and see.