PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.
Note: This is a piece I originally wrote for an Oregon Common Cause Ethics Committee on which I sit – see below. I have revised the piece to fit this blog. I post it now, even though the importance of our work over the last year has been dented a bit by the understandable occupation with the coronavirus pandemic. Still, keeping a focus on ethical behavior and conduct is critical if government in this country is to survive.
Remember Watergate?
Well, those of us who lived through the scandal, now more than 50 years old, recall that it brought down the Nixon Administration. Those who may not have lived through it no doubt have heard about unethical dealings, dirty tricks and crimes.
If you want to understand just a bit about Watergate, watch the old film, All the President’s Men, as I did a few weeks ago. It will tell you all you need to know about a terrible chapter in U.S. history.
However, if there is good news about Watergate, it is that reaction to the crimes and excesses of the scandal ushered in almost 40 years of commitment to ethical behavior and conduct in and about government, both on the part of elected officials and the public at large.
Elected and appointed officials recognized the importance of honesty and ethics. The public expected it.
But, now, in the last 10 years, ethics has receded from public consciousness.
“The current ethics program, at least at the federal level, was developed in response to Watergate,” recalls Walter Shaub, the retired director of the Federal Ethics Office. “The system worked well for 40 years. There was room for improvement, but, for the most part, the system worked well as a preventive mechanism. The flaw was that it was completely dependent on the president’s administration to comply and set an example. The current administration has signaled that it does not want the system to work.” current federal ethics program was developed in response to Watergate. The system
In response to such a reality, Oregon Common Cause created a volunteer committee of 10 citizens more than a year ago to meet and propose ways to promote ethical behavior and conduct in public life.
Members of the committee were drawn from the Executive and Judicial Branches in Oregon state government, former state legislators in Oregon, an experienced Oregon college political science expert, and representatives of the business community. In short, a wealth of experience existed on the committee.
One step the committee took was to work with DHM Research, one of Oregon’s most reputable polling firms, to test Oregonian attitudes about ethics and honesty in government.
In one question, respondents were asked how important it was for high-level officials such as presidents, governors and senators to be honest and ethical. The answer – 98 per cent said honesty and ethics was important. That even exceeded a recent PEW Research Report, which put the proportion at 91 per cent.
In another question, DHM asked respondents to rate credentials for high-level public officials. Basic honesty came out on top, but “ability to compromise” also ranked highly. It came in at 83 per cent, again just higher than a PEW report at 78 per cent. That’s important because, for government to work in the way it is supposed to work in a democracy, finding the smart middle ground is critical.
Buoyed by the DHM survey results and after reviewing a wide ethics landscape, the Common Cause Committee decided to focus on two initiatives – (1) creating ethics pledges for public officials and, (2) injecting ethics education in school curricula. It also considered, but did not end up proposing, a major effort to educate voters about the importance of ethics, stopping that only because of the huge financial cost of such a ballot-measure type effort.
The first initiative is to advocate that candidates running for Secretary of State and the Second District Congressional seat sign pledges to commit to ethical behavior and conduct, both in the campaigns and, for the two who win, in office.
The pledge focuses on basic principles of honesty, fairness, responsibility and respect, emphasizing, for example, that opponents are valid participants in elections regardless of who wins. Such a construct would be far different than what happens in many election races these days.
Based on experience in these two races, the goal is to expand the range of elected officials who would be asked to sign such pledges, both for campaigns and in office.
“The good news here,” says state government veteran Mike Marsh, chair of the Common Cause Committee, “is that, if officials sign the pledges, they can be measured on how well they live up to them. That would increase the value of ethics in public life.”
As for appointed officials, Marsh said he and colleagues will be working with the governor and other high-level officials in Oregon to advocate enacting the ethics pledges for “executive and management service” employees, as well as those appointed to state boards and commissions. Together, that would amount to hundreds of officials who would commit to ethical behavior by signing the pledges.
For appointed officials, the idea of a pledge builds on what is already in Oregon law — ethics rules and regulations governed by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission, which is being consulted about the renewed ethics emphasis in Oregon.
“Ethics pledges,” Marsh adds, “are used by a number of major Oregon private companies that have a commitment to ethics and honesty in how they operate every day. This includes Intel which assigned an executive to work with us on the committee and which asks its executives to sign ethics pledges every year.”
The second initiative relates to re-emphasizing ethics issues in the social studies and civics curricula school districts have in place for high school students.
The committee has worked closely with two districts – the Bend-LaPine School District in Central Oregon and the Salem-Keizer School District in the Willamette Valley – to help officials draft appropriate additions to current curricula. Those two districts have been open to the ethics emphasis and curriculum experts are meeting now to translate proposals into usable form for the classroom.
The goal is to develop models that could work in other districts around Oregon.
Overall, there are few issues as important as building – or re-building – trust in government.
PEW Research reports that “76 per cent of Americans believe trust in the federal government has declined in the past 20 years and, when asked why, more than one third cite something related to how the U.S. government is performing – whether it is doing too much, too little, the wrong things or nothing at all – including how money has corrupted it, how corporations and unions control it, and general references to ‘the swamp.’”
It’s time for all Americans to reverse the “we don’t trust government” trend. All of us should be able to expect, if not demand, a high-level of ethical and honest behavior on the part of those who serve in government.
And, as citizens, we should practice ethical behavior ourselves as we relate to government and as we live in our neighborhoods. If we recognize a high ethical bar for ourselves, it would make what we expect of government more credible.
Perspective from the 19th Hole 