The Unknown Candidate: In Search of a Mensch

Monday, February 20, 2006

In Search of a Mensch

The dictionary defines "mensch" as:

mensch |men ch | noun ( pl. menschen |ˈmen ch ən|or mensches) informal a person of integrity and honor.

ORIGIN 1930s: Yiddish mensh, from German Mensch, literally ‘person.’

Like Paul Krugman, "Be a mensch, " was a frequently heard phrase in our household. "He's a real mensch, " or "What a mensch!" were the highest compliments one could give another.

A 'mensch' is simply a person of integrity and honor, values which were instilled in us by our parents, our religions, our schools, and at certain previous times, by our government.

Yet, as Krugman notes, our current government leaders--not by their failures, but by their failure to take responsibility for their mistakes--are no mensches.

Unfortunately, the absense of morally responsible leadership in government extends far beyond the White House. Where are the mensches in Congress who should be serving the people's needs instead of those of their fellow politicians? Oh, to be sure, there are still one or two good souls out there. But they can't change things all by themselves.

Where are all the mensch citizens? Why are they not expressing their outrage over torture and wars of aggression and hurricane victims left to die or fend for themselves?

Where are the mensches in the Religious Right? Why are they not fighting to end world hunger and aids and genocide?

I would argue that our current 'mensch deficit' is indicative of a moral crisis in our country. And unless we, as a people unite to regain our moral and ethical bearings, we will necessarily fail to do what is right for our country, for the world community and for the future generations of both.

Thanks, Paul Krugman, for a great article. You're a real mensch.

Photo credit: Dr. King, one of our country's greatest mensches, leaves FBI headquarters after a 1964 meeting with then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI continually harassed the civil rights leader, tapping his phones and even placing an informer on his staff. Sound familiar? (Corbis Bettman/Time Magazine)

The Mensch Gap
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

"Be a mensch," my parents told me. Literally, a mensch is a person. But by implication, a mensch is an upstanding person who takes responsibility for his actions.

The people now running America aren't mensches.

Dick Cheney isn't a mensch. There have been many attempts to turn the shooting of Harry Whittington into a political metaphor, but the most characteristic moment was the final act — the Moscow show-trial moment in which the victim of Mr. Cheney's recklessness apologized for getting shot. Remember, Mr. Cheney, more than anyone else, misled us into the Iraq war. Then, when neither links to Al Qaeda nor W.M.D. materialized, he shifted the blame to the very intelligence agencies he bullied into inflating the threat.

Donald Rumsfeld isn't a mensch. Before the Iraq war Mr. Rumsfeld muzzled commanders who warned that we were going in with too few troops, and sidelined State Department experts who warned that we needed a plan for the invasion's aftermath. But when the war went wrong, he began talking about "unknown unknowns" and going to war with "the army you have," ducking responsibility for the failures of leadership that have turned the war into a stunning victory — for Iran.

Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, isn't a mensch. Remember his excuse for failing to respond to the drowning of New Orleans? "I remember on Tuesday morning," he said on "Meet the Press," "picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged the Bullet.' " We now know that by Tuesday morning, he had received — and ignored — many warnings about the unfolding disaster.

Michael Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, isn't a mensch. He insists that the prescription drug plan's catastrophic start doesn't reflect poorly on his department, that "no logical person" would have expected "a transition happening that is so large without some problems." In fact, Medicare's 1966 startup went very smoothly. That didn't happen this time because his department ignored outside experts who warned, months in advance, about exactly the disaster that has taken place.

I could go on. Officials in this administration never take responsibility for their actions. When something goes wrong, it's always someone else's fault.

Was it always like this? I don't want to romanticize our political history, but I don't think so. Think of Dwight Eisenhower, who wrote a letter before D-Day accepting the blame if the landings failed. His modern equivalent would probably insist that the landings were a "catastrophic success," then try to lay the blame for their failure on the editorial page of The New York Times.

Where have all the mensches gone? The character of the administration reflects the character of the man at its head. President Bush is definitely not a mensch; his inability to admit mistakes or take responsibility for failure approaches the pathological. He surrounds himself with subordinates who share his aversion to facing unpleasant realities. And as long as his appointees remain personally loyal, he defends their performance, no matter how incompetent. After all, to do otherwise would be to admit that he made a mistake in choosing them. Last week he declared that Mr. Leavitt is doing, yes, "a heck of a job."

But how did such people attain power in the first place? Maybe it's the result of our infantilized media culture, in which politicians, like celebrities, are judged by the way they look, not the reality of their achievements. Mr. Bush isn't an effective leader, but he plays one on TV, and that's all that matters.

Whatever the reason for the woeful content of our leaders' character, it has horrifying consequences. You can't learn from mistakes if you won't admit making any mistakes, an observation that explains a lot about the policy disasters of recent years — the failed occupation of Iraq, the failed response to Katrina, the failed drug plan.

Above all, the anti-mensches now ruling America are destroying our moral standing. A recent National Journal report finds that we're continuing to hold many prisoners at Guantánamo even though the supposed evidence against them has been discredited. We're even holding at least eight prisoners who are no longer designated enemy combatants. Why? Well, releasing people you've imprisoned by mistake means admitting that you made a mistake. And that's something the people now running America never do.

Photo credit: Paul Krugman (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)