A series of recent and not-so-recent political events--the flap over Clinton's Kaffeeklatsches, questions surrounding the nomination of Anthony Lake as CIA director, the conduct of the 1996 elections -- share a set of issues in common. All of them raise the question of the degree of accountability we demand from figures of authority. The charge is often leveled against one regime or another that its political system lacks "accountability," and furthermore, that the more people have access to political information and proceedings, the smoother the functioning of democracy will be. The question is rarely raised, whether the sort of publicity demanded for accountability's sake can be excessive.
A recent article in a well-known conservative rag, the National Review, has charged Lake with an unbridled taste for secrecy, for working beyond the purview of the law and government directives, for cloak-and-dagger skullduggery of every kind. But really--given a choice between a CIA director with these characteristics and one who spends his time remaking the CIA into your friendly neighborhood intelligence service, I prefer the former. Similarly, given a choice between politicians whose careers are nothing but a prolonged baby-kiss and those who are aloof and private but contribute substantive and carefully thought-out legislation, I'll take the latter.
Political culture in America and increasingly in other countries is now public -- much too public. Consider some of the disadvantages, for example, of televising on C-SPAN the proceedings of the House and Senate, not to mention (now) the British House of Commons. Those who are not willing to ban C-SPAN and its imitators may well have to recognize that they are sounding the death knell of political rhetoric; not surprisingly, since as Lysias pointed out a good many years ago, it is the essence of rhetoric that it is particular to its time and place and circumstances. Its reproduction, whether on the television screen or in a newspaper the next day, is necessarily a distortion. I cannot speak as to the quality of American floor discourse, but considering British Parliamentary speaking, the decline just since the days of Churchill and Macmillan is too glaring to admit of denial. With the rise of C-SPAN and similar electronic media, this is no surprise. One's remarks can be recorded for later attack, scrutinized for the minutest error, analyzed for proportion of political expediency to genuine sentiment, dissected for any manifestations of gross prejudice, etc., by, not only the spectators, but by anyone anywhere in the world with this channel. The ramifications of this "right" suddenly afforded to millions outside as well as inside the country of observing the highest-level political proceedings are quite staggering.
President Freedman will become the senior President of an Ivy League college. His explanation for the brevity of tenures is very likely correct, which is that there is an ethic of responsibility, i.e. accountability, to a plethora of interest groups, that often conflict and the satisfaction of which can be at best partial and internally contradictory. Yet still, he maintains office hours, the institutionalization of which seems a pure manifestation of this extreme idea of accountability. Why? Why not drop the pretenses that (a) he gives a solitary damn what any single student thinks about anything and (b) that it would be a good thing if he did--that, in fact, it is a useful expenditure of a college president's working hours to listen to individual gripes? The same can be said of the deans--indeed, a moderate reduction in our expectations of accountability could ease the load on many an administrator's mind, and schedule. To which it will be answered by some that it is distinctively American to demand a high degree of public responsibility, that this enables us to avoid the entrenchment of interests and social tensions prevalent elsewhere.
Aye, there's the rub! It is possible -- perhaps likely -- that the lessened demand for publicity and accountability I am proposing would involve toleration of a higher degree of corruption in politics than has been "traditional." But it was difficult to listen to Rudolph Crew and not ask oneself how many New Yorkers would not wish back Tammany Hall itself, could it provide the cleanliness, safety, and rigor that prevailed in public schools under its "reign." Much of this debate over accountability, then, comes down to whether we desire the real good of the community -- be it a college or a political community -- or to indulge our sense of the picturesque; and perhaps we may hold it a worthy maxim that the good liberal is one never willing to sacrifice human happiness to his sense of the picturesque.
