Ethics.
Toss that word into a business circle, or the presence of medical personnel, and you are bound to find yourself challenged and intrigued by the scenarios and questions that pop up. It hearkens images of money, and tough calls, and occasionally life and death. It calls for the sort of fundamental thinking where reasonable people are truly separated by perspective and experience and opinion. Living exclusively in the gray, ethics challenge one to ask not just "what do I think," but "what would I DO?"
No cabal has dived deeper into its darkest depths than the military.
Military ethics provoke quests for responses to queries unthinkable in any context. They pose questions that have no answers; require conclusions no human can live with, and propose solutions that ripple not just through choices of life and death, but through the very essence of history.
A commander in combat faces the fact that war IS hell and s/he may find him or herself in the untenable position of choosing between wrong and wrong. And many are aware that sometimes the only answer is the bad one.
Which brings us ... to the Presidency. It is a job marked by pomp and circumstance, ruffles and flourishes. It promises no easy questions, and no unanimous answers. It christens one COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF and sits heavy on the shoulders of one mortal who is given infinite power, virtually unlimited resources, and stripped of all friendships. Its only tool is wisdom, and its only judge is legacy. There are counselors and policies, but their agendas are hidden in plain sight and history holds only one man accountable. And on many days he is left to singularly condone or condemn the lonely commander's bad answer.
Into this space walks a proud Texan. His most generous friends call him aloof and disinterested. Born on third base, he steals home and is rewarded with this--the most powerful position on the planet. He is not the first; there have been many oval office dwellers cursed by legacy, and thought in hindsight to be fools.
He is rapidly confronted by the most challenging confluence of hard questions to ever face a sitting President. It is a Rubik's cube of international law, war policy, economic theory, and public safety. It presents the new King-of-the-mountain with the most dastardly combinations of bad, illegal, and evil, set to the silent count of an hourglass racing toward empty, and a terrified nation demanding protection.
It is military ethics at its most naked and raw.
And without a looking glass into the future, He makes His call.
It is illegal, and evil. It contradicts the very soul of the Constitution he has sworn to protect. But he has made his choice(s) and he believes.
He throws himself to the mercy of legacy and history--and the empathy of his successor...
...Who walks out of a brilliant campaign and face first into the resulting mess to confront his first Presidential ethics question: "Should I be the one to set the precedent for going after an ex-President."
At his disposal are the pardon, the ignore-ance button, the condemnation card, and a razor-sharp legal mind. He is a man of compromise, who values the the brilliance of the universally unsatisfactory solution. Like a commander in combat, this combat Commander-in-Chief discerns that the only answers are bad ones.
Without a looking glass into the future, He makes his call.
The people howl, the pundits pontificate, and his allies scream for blood.
But He is--ethically at least--correct; tho perhaps not "right"
...in defending 'Dubya.'
Peace,
--Stew.
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