Paul Krugman: The Mensch Gap

Everybody makes mistakes. But not everyone can admit them:

The Mensch Gap, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY 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. ...

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 ... "I remember on Tuesday morning," ... "picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged the Bullet.' " There were no such headlines, at least in major newspapers, and we now know that he 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. ...

I could go on. Officials in this administration never take responsibility ... 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. ... Dwight Eisenhower ... 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 ... blame ... 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 ... approaches the pathological. ... 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. ...

But how did such people attain power in the first place? ... Whatever the reason ... 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 ...

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.

Previous (2/13) column: Paul Krugman:  Debt and Denial
Next (2/23) column: Paul Krugman:  Osama, Saddam and the Ports

Comments

says...

I like this word.

Don’t mensch-in it
Mencsh meat pie
Argue-mensch
I have the mensches
Mensch-kin
It wasn't just big, it was e-mensch.

Sorry.

[calmo]

Thanks for that light hearted post anony. There is a humor gap too.
I like this:
The character of the administration reflects the character of the man at its head. President Bush is definitely not a mensch;
but think it's a little sub-mensch. There is no man at the head. (Ok, so Krugman says that in so many softer words.) And there is no head on that man. (Please refer to those occasions where he has to wing it like a mensch instead of scripting it like a sub-mensch.)
And this:
Above all, the anti-mensches now ruling America are destroying our moral standing.
but delete the following text and illustrate the abuse that is perpetrated on the public by showing the President of the United States as a model of the highest moral conduct. And the silence the media outlets give this spectacle is, above all, the worst of it.

[Bukko]

Krugman is SO right about the U.S. losing its international standing. I emigrated to Australia last year, largely because I could no longer keep paying taxes into the war machine whilst claiming to call myself a moral human being. My wife and I are from San Francisco, but we usually were on the fringes even in that left-wing city because of our vocal disgust with the course America has taken under the Cheney administration. However, EVERYBODY in Australia feels like we do. Young ones and elders, ridgy-didge native Aussies and recent immigrants -- they all look at the U.S. like a formerly favourite uncle who's turned out to be a child molester. It's not France I'm talking about; it's a country that patterns itself after America. When an admirer becomes horrified, it's not a good thing!

[Devang]

The ultimate non-mensch here is the media, Bukko.

Krugman needs to be this scathing more often.

[Larry]

Krugman, former economist for Enron and champion of the French economy. ROFLMAO seriously. Enough said. Him writing about someone else's apologies is like Hillary crying out about Bush's "secrecy" How those FBI files doin? Krugman's had so many howlers that even the NYTimes obudsman resigned rather than deal with him and his "stick my fingers in my ears and I won't hear you" bs. He's a joke.

Bukko-of course in AUS you'd run with the same immature crowd as you did in SF. How's the fetal position down under-reversed like the toilet flow?

[calmo]

Larry, the sub-mensch, (this IS a complement) remembers his childhood, (another complement) and pines for those days.(seriously, why not discard the present and reference some background that is better scripted?) [Ok, this is not a complement] Don't we all? (serious enough)
I confess to discarding Kudlow in the same fashion as Larry discards Krugman. I no longer read Kudlow. I prejudge him --such is the nature of my sensitivities [Ok, and my limited disposable leisure that finds MUCH better things to do.] as a tool. Yes, far below us sub-menschers. (See, it was a complement)
yes, Larry, even in a fetal position, (Larry has other positions, I can tell, you?) rates higher on my list than Kudlow.

[tdo]

Usually the comments on this blog are thoughtful and informative. Let's hope Larry is an aberration and not a trend.

[howard]

tdo, that's what i was thinking: how did larry discover this blog? maybe he's just a paid krugman-hater.

it is rare in the comments section here to discover someone who is wrong in his every assertion, but i suppose there's a first time for everything....

[calmo]

Greetings Howard. Time to tuck my dress in now that we have your fine company.
Larry lands and for that I'm willing to hear him out --yes tolerate his slander of Krugman, Aussie (See? I'm a jealous masochist) and [Why did he skip over me?] just about everyone.
You figure tdo is asking for a personal ad hominem with that 'aberration' talk? (Hard to gauge subtlety on such short notice.)
You are right: it was kind of Larry to drop in and leave us a message.

[dryfly]

You are right: it was kind of Larry to drop in and leave us a message.

Seagull posting... fly in, drop your messages here and there... on cars, people, parking lot... then fly away.

[kMoose]

nice blog. i've been following krugman for 2 months, now. Happy I was pointed to this place. My only negative sentiment so far is that this isnt really an 'economics' article, in as much as its just a diatribe against Bush&CO LLC.

[ilsm]

I did not know!!

"Krugman, former economist for Enron and champion of the French economy."

But, the French are on the Euro could the US go there?

Just what part of the Enron scam did Krugman do, any better than Cheney's part?

[kMoose]

behold, google : http://www.wws.princeton.edu/pkrugman/enron.html

to quote 'So what was my relationship with Enron? I was offered a $50,000 fee for a year's participation in the advisory board, which would entail attending and presenting at two meetings, each of which would extend over two days. The year I was on the board only one meeting took place; the other was canceled because of weather.' .... 'At the one meeting I attended, I talked about the Asian financial crisis, then still in full swing.'

[calmo]

So either prices have really climbed or Mr Greenspan just commands a premium. Krugman looks like a bargain to me, you?