Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Secret Service Head Quits
Donald J. Trump is a former president and current candidate for president. That means he has Secret Service protection around the clock. Ten days ago, an assassination attempt failed more by luck than anything else. Mr. Trump took a fragment of the teleprompter to the ear. An inch to the right of the shooter, and the bullet would have hit Mr. Trump in the eye. It took until yesterday for the head of the Secret Service, Kim Cheatle, to resign. That is unconscionable. When an agency fails in its mission, the top brass there should quit. It is called taking responsibility. It used to be fairly common, and these days, it is almost unheard of. She resigned not over principle but because she had both political parties mad at her for the failure. Rather than doing the right thing by quitting, she left before she could be ousted.
The facts are pretty clear. She was not in charge of the operation on the ground that day. The Secret Service took charge of the secured perimeter, but the building from which the shots were fired was outside that perimeter. Local law enforcement was in charge there. While the tactical failure was that of local authorities, the fact that the Secret Service did not secure a building 150 yards away from the former president was a strategic blunder. Local enforcement should not have been in charge.
The premise behind resignation after failure is the idea that cleaning up a mess cannot be done by the person who made it. This may run contrary to every parenting article on the matter, but children are not top level bureaucrats. The latter have political reasons to clean things up in a certain way. There are reasons to try to sweep things under the rug. A new leader has no such agenda and can address the matter without concern for careers and pensions.
One of the best examples of this behavior came in 1981 when Argentina went to war with Britain over the disputed Falkland/Malvinas Islands. There was a flurry of diplomatic activity when the crisis erupted, but it failed to prevent war. In his obituary, the Guardian wrote simply, "He resigned as foreign secretary in 1982, three days after Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, accepting full responsibility as the minister in charge on what he later called the most sorrowful day of his political life." He went back to his stamp collection and lived to the ripe old age of 99.
Why has the idea of resigning over failure or over policy differences gone out of fashion? It is not entirely clear, but one of the main factors is that this kind of resignation grew in importance in the Georgian era, when government was the avocation of the idle rich and especially aristocrats. There were men who needed a government job like they needed a chocolate teapot. It was something to do in between gala balls, affairs with mistresses and fox hunting. Today, careerism is rife. People not only need the job financially, but also they want the status and power that go with it. The old aristocrats had that anyway.
None of this should reflect negatively on Ms. Cheatle in any respect. She quit as she should have, and if it took a little too long and it took a bit of political pressure, well, that is unfortunate. Still, she is out of the picture, and a caretaker has taken over the job.
"Now we have to pick up the pieces. We have to rebuild the American people's faith and trust in the Secret Service as an agency," Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) said.
That is much more likely to succeed with Ms. Cheatle out of the way. One does not believe that she was incompetent, nor that she was deliberately ignoring threats. One simply believes that no one will be able to question her motives because she will not be part of the rebuilding. The resignation draws a line under her tenure, and a clean slate is possible.
© Copyright 2024 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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