Morality Is More Than Getting Away With It

August promises to be a month full of dissection of deals and details regarding the Bill Clinton-Monica S. Lewinsky relationship. As the nation focuses, again, on who did what, who saw what and who said what, it is important to keep an eye on a larger theme.

Public trust has taken a serious hit in this sordid matter. Americans now have good reason to be suspicious of government, of the press and of individuals who seem to offer friendship. This suspicion is not the same as healthy skepticism. Instead, the need for such caution signals a society in serious trouble.

An analysis of some of the more flagrant violations of public trust, however, might help readers take in news reports with a more critical eye and might encourage government and news media to operate on a higher standard.

What’s wrong with literary agent Lucianne S. Goldberg and hopeful author Linda R. Tripp conspiring to set up Lewinsky? They were, after all, trying to get a book contract.

What’s wrong is that enticing and entrapping another person robs her of autonomy. Treating the other as an object to achieve our own purposes illustrates the lowest form of moral development. In this state, people are unable to look past their own needs and desires to understand that other people are just like them in fundamental ways. This is a state unable to sustain true personal relationships.

What’s wrong with the most sophisticated journalists lapping up leaks from the independent counsel’s office? After all, Washington is flooded with leaks. But, even there, it’s toxic. Consider why.

In months past, citizens got reports of what “sources say” witnesses would testify to before the grand jury. But what we needed to know was that independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr would violate professional ethics, and maybe the law, to keep spinning the story at the same speed as other players not bound by promises of prosecutorial silence. The independent counsel has a special obligation to protect the secrecy of grand-jury proceedings.

Citizens need the press to tell when those in power are playing fast and loose with the rules they are trusted to uphold. There’s no other social institution to depend on to relay these truths.

What’s wrong with deception by government leaders, whether it is Starr’s failed attempt to set up Clinton with surreptitious taping, or whether it is Clinton himself using artfully chosen accurate words to lead listeners to a false conclusion? The use of deceptive techniques by those who lead us must, logically, remain morally questionable.

Deception works only because people expect the truth. We cannot have the trust necessary for public or civic relationships if we are to assume that we are always or generally being deceived.

The history of philosophy is full of examples of philosophers who counsel that it is sometimes judicious for leaders to engage in duplicity. However, in each case, the deception is justified as the only way to maintain civil order in a society when it is impossible to remove a leader from office.

Thomas Hobbes, the 17th-century British philosopher, placed the sovereign above the rules of ordinary citizens, but only because maintaining society was imperative. Without an unquestioned leader, who could force his subjects to obey the law, individuals had little chance for a peaceful life. The job of the monarch or assembly was to protect individuals and the good functioning of society.

If it were not for this communal organization, the lives of individuals would be, in the words of Hobbes, “nasty, brutish and short.” Leaders, according to Hobbes, may lie, if necessary, but there was no possibility of impeachment in the Hobbesian world. It was assumed that the leader will always make decisions consistent with maintaining peace and justice. If he did not, revolution or anarchy--a return to a state of nature--would be the result of his failure.

Even Niccolo Machiavelli, the Florentine philosopher from a century earlier, who is credited with telling the Prince that justification for lying can be found in the realization that people are naturally corrupt, makes his recommendation for how and when leaders ought to deceive on the basis that it is necessary for the monarch to stay in power at all costs.

The classical justifications for leaders’ deceptions break down when we conceive of government as an institution that expresses the will of the people in an evolving way, and when we remember that all those in power are assumed to have only temporary tenure.

It is ironic that we see such questionable behavior in our leaders just as moral philosophers are thinking in far grander ways than the old dictate “Avoid Causing Harm.” For the first time, women philosophers and psychologists are being heard in a clear and sustained way. These new voices suggest that the sort of minimal morality promoted by the traditional canon cannot sustain relationships in the public or private arena.

The feminist approach suggests the most ethical decision is one that takes care of everyone’s needs. What is ultimately most important is how we can act in ways that maintain relationships. Deception is wrong because it breaks those bonds. Exploitation is wrong because it sacrifices one person for another’s agenda.

This new language of ethics is language that rejects judgment based on the letter of the law. In her classic article “What Do Women Want in a Moral Theory?”, contemporary philosopher Annette Baier notes, “Sensible knaves are precisely those who exploit us without breaking the law.” The fact that someone manages to stay barely on the right side of the law does not imply the action is ethical. Ethical behavior, from the feminist perspective, is based on an analysis of whether the most vulnerable parties are being protected and affirmed, rather than by judging who has managed to get away with the most outrageous act.

Government and news media should foster the trust required to maintain civic relationships rather than act in ways that break the bonds. It is society that supports these vital institutions. It doesn’t take much moral development for politicians and journalists to understand it’s in their self-interest not to destroy the society their jobs depend on.

If they do understand, the next month may be different in important ways from the never-ending rumors and speculations of January. Citizens may find themselves getting a little less detail, fewer unattributed leaks. But that would leave time for politicians and reporters to address the important policy questions of true concern to citizens in a self-governing society.