RESPONSIBILITY
I decided to write this email about why we don't have a "plural" executive,
tying it into why having some many executive departments is not a good idea and
why the Founding Fathers didn't expect Congress members to have large staffs.
They were to do the job themselves, accepting full praise or blame for their
actions.
Amazinglly, I then became aware of this story of Representative Rangel is
blaming his staff for his ethics problems--once again proving that human
behavior never changes:.
Associated Press updated 6:17 p.m. PT, Thurs., Feb. 25, 2010
Rep. Charles Rangel, the most powerful tax-writing lawmaker in Congress and a 40-year veteran of Capitol Hill, acknowledged Thursday that an ethics panel has accused him of accepting Caribbean trips from a corporation in violation of House rules...
"I don't want to be critical of the committee but common sense dictates that members of Congress should not be held responsible for what could be the wrongdoing or mistakes or errors of staff unless there's reason to believe that member knew or should have known, and there is nothing in the record to indicate the latter," Rangel said at a hastily called evening news conference on Capitol Hill.
Now, here's what Federalist Paper # 70 [paragraph 15-16]* says:
But one of the strongest objections to both types of plural executive is that it tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility.
There are two types of responsibility: moral and legal. Irresponsibility leads to censure and to punishment. Censure is the more important, especially in an elective office. An irresponsible man in public office will more often act in a way that makes him unworthy of trust than in a way that makes him subject to legal punishment.
But when more than one person holds the position of Executive, it is difficult to figure out who is morally or legally responsible. The people in the executive will accuse each other. It often becomes impossible to determine who to blame or punish for a harmful act. Blame is shifted from one to another with so much dexterity that the public doesn't know who made the decision.
The circumstances leading to any national misfortune can be extremely complicated. We could clearly see that there has been mismanagement. But if several people were involved in making the decision, it may be impossible to say who is truly responsible for the evil.
"I was overruled by my council."
"The council was so divided in their opinions that it was impossible to
obtain any better resolution on the point."
These and similar pretexts are always available, whether true or false. And who
will take the trouble or incur the odium of a strict scrutiny into the secret
discussions of the council? If a zealous citizen wants to take on the task and
if there is collusion between the parties involved, it would be easy to make
each participant's part in the plan so ambiguous that no one could discover the
precise conduct of each member of the council.
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* All Federalist Paper quotes are from The Federalist
Papers: Modern English Edition Two, available on my website and Amazon.com
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http://Mary.Webster.org
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