A Sunday “Walkabout”: Some Thoughts About Power and Character
Jonn lets me do a verbal, off-topic “walkabout” here from time to time. What follows is such a ramble – an off-the-wall thought or two that’s not necessarily directly concerned with one of TAH’s normal topics.
Consider yourself forewarned.
. . .
We’ve all heard Lord Acton’s axiom: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It’s perhaps one of the most widely-known quotations in the English language.
Most regard it as a truism. And on the surface, it does indeed appear to be on the mark.
Even in the military examples seem to be common. It’s hard to argue against it when you see things such apparently confirmatory examples as Gerald “PX Ranger” Green; the aptly named James “Two-Timing Fraud” Johnson; former BG, now retired LTC Jeffrey “Coersion” Sinclair; and Generals David Petreaus and Kip Ward.
Enlisted personnel and civilian defense officials to a lesser extent show the same faults from time to time as well. Witness the periodic drill sergeant scandals, the antics of former SMA Gene McKinney, and the former Acting Secretary of the Army John Shannon.
It’s not just an Army problem. Examples exist from all services that seem to confirm Acton’s thesis.
You also find similar conduct in other professions that are based on trust. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at clergy and cops. Finding public examples of corrupt conduct in either profession isn’t particularly difficult.
Until recently, I thought Acton was probably right, at least to some extent. I don’t believe that any more.
I now think Acton got it wrong; that’s not what’s going on here. I don’t think power itself is to blame at all.
Power doesn’t corrupt. Rather, power reveals.
I didn’t come up with that thesis. At the end of this ramble, I’ll give credit to the unusual source that to my knowledge first voiced that thesis – and convinced me that’s the case.
. . .
We seem to see so many such examples of corrupt behavior by people in positions of high trust. Yet in truth, such instances are rare. Consider:
• For every Gerald Green, there are literally hundreds of LTCs who played it straight and advanced on their own merit.
• For every James “Bigamist” Johnson, there are hundreds of Colonels who didn’t commit bigamy and defraud the government to support their mistress.
• For every Jeffrey Sinclair, there are dozens of GO/FOs who did not attempt to strong arm subordinates into a sexual relationship.
• For every Kip Ward, there are dozens of GO/FOs who followed the rules concerning TDY travel to the letter.
• For every David Petraus, there are dozens of GOs/FOs who did not retain and store classified materials improperly, then show them to his biographer afterwards.
If Acton were right, then those kinds of corrupt conduct would be the rule at high levels. But it’s not. It’s the gross exception, not the rule.
We hear about such behavior today when it happens. The media – both traditional and electronic – thrive on scandal. Given advances in technology they’re more efficient today than they were even 20 years ago about getting the story out. The traditional media today also seem to be more concerned with deadlines than accuracy. So when something along these lines happens, we hear about it relatively quickly; they don’t bother to wait and “check it out” first.
In short, the conduct we’re talking about is IMO quite rare. The vast majority don’t engage.
However, the conduct we hear about does appear to be concentrated at higher ranks. Why is that?
. . .
Part of the reason IMO is simply selective reporting. Think about it for a moment – is it really news if some PFC or 2LT (or even a CPT) does something bad? No, not really – though you might hear about it, briefly, in the case of the CPT. Even then, unless the case is sexually tawdry or involves a great deal of money, for most misbehavior below the grade of E9 and O5, you’ll likely not hear about it.
Why? Unless big dollars or sex is involved, the media just doesn’t seem to care all that much. Outside of training commands, contracting, and comptroller positions, most junior officer and NCO assignments don’t really provide the opportunity for a scandal that the media will find “interesting”.
IMO, that’s part of the reason. But it’s not all. Another factor is at work.
. . .
The military does a pretty good job of screening its people as they advance. Those with a tendency to abuse either the public trust or their subordinates tend to get weeded out as they progress.
However, like any process created or implemented by humans, the military’s screening process is imperfect. Some with seriously flawed character slip through from time to time.
Why? Sometimes their bosses simply are biased in their favor, or are flawed themselves. Maybe their supervisor has an inkling of the problem, but isn’t sure (or doesn’t realize it’s as serious a flaw as it really is) and in today’s “zero defect”, highly inflated evaluation system doesn’t want to kill a promising career – so he/she gives them the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes they’re good actors and manage to hide the flaw. Perhaps they are forced by supervision and lack of authority to “toe the line” and suppress the flaw. Dunno.
Hell – perhaps they actually change over time. I personally don’t think that happens often if at all, but I’m not a shrink and I guess it is at least theoretically possible.
For whatever reason, some that shouldn’t slip through the cracks. They get promoted until they are selected for and placed in a position of wide-ranging authority – a position of high trust, with less direct supervision and where their decisions are less likely to be questioned.
I can’t speak for the other services, but in the Army – outside of contracting and comptroller work – a position involving truly serious authority over hundreds or serious financial clout generally doesn’t happen until O5 for officers, and really not until the CSM level on the enlisted side. (Company commanders and First Sergeants just don’t typically have enough authority over enough people and resources IMO to qualify.) So it’s not until the E9 and O5 grades that individuals with such flaws have the opportunity to show it.
But now . . . for the first time in their career, they actually have the power to do something they’ve been disposed to do all along, with what they believe is a reasonable chance of evading detection. So they do.
“Corrupted by power?” Hardly. Their attaining power simply revealed what was there all along.
. . .
I said earlier I’d give credit to the individual who convinced me Acton was wrong. That individual is in many ways somewhat surprising; it was Robert A. Caro. He’s neither government nor military; he’s a biographer, and has done some truly fascinating work. Caro wrote an acclaimed biography of NYC’s Robert Moses, and has done a multi-volume biography (still incomplete) of LBJ. All of his work I’ve read so far is an excellent read; I’d highly recommend it.
Caro has been fascinated by power and its use his entire career; he’s studied it in detail. Here’s what Caro had to say on the subject:
We’re taught Lord Acton’s axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don’t believe it’s always true any more. Power doesn’t always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals. When you have enough power to do what you always wanted to do, then you see what the guy always wanted to do.
I think Caro, not Acton, nailed this one. Power doesn’t corrupt; power is neutral. Achieving a position of power merely gives those who possess it the opportunity to reveal their true nature.
. . .
That’s the end of the ramble for today. Back to the res.
Category: Pointless blather, Who knows
Power is abused by abusive people.
Good article, Hondo.
@Ex-PH2:
The way I tend to see it is that – the corrupt seek power.
Power is, like firearms, a neutral thing. Only dangerous when the incompetent or naturally dangerous use them.
Not all that gain power are corrupt, but, the corrupt do definitely seek power. And this is where Hondo’s thing comes into play.
The reveal of the nature of the individual who’s gained power tells us which are the corrupt and which not.
The reveal of the corrupt also reveals which of the fellow powerful are lacking in moral courage. Those who do not use their power in a corrupt manner are still just as guilty as those who do, when the seemingly non-corrupt refuse to turn-to and eliminate the corrupt from amongst themselves.
It is those lacking moral courage that allow the corrupt to become so destructive and damaging.
Ex-PH2, Off topic. Did you ever know a Master Chief Photographers Mate Scallan? He was the master chief at the navy photography school in Pensacola. I just read his obit in the Pensacola News Journal. The guy led quite an interesting life.
I was there in the summer of 1967. I don’t remember anyone by that name, but the instructors were all PH1.
I may have been there before HIS time.
Yes… well-written, thoughtful article.
(wish I was as smart as many of the posters here) 🙁
Bis Steve, me too.
This should be taught as an Ethics course in all institutions of higher learning.
agreed but ethics has no place in most institutions of higher learning nowadays.
Great article:
Today, we recognize a man with immense power who rode on a donkey, met with a path palms to protect his bare feet, knowing it would be last painless journey.
A man of great power who did not squander his position.
Thanks Hondo, reads like this remind me of much greater men and women.
BTW: Tonite on Nat Geo is O’Reilly’s “Killing Jesus” production.
Thanks, Hondo. Well done.
Based upon long forgotten sources and experiences, I concluded decades ago that it is mostly folks of the middle management level who do the scratching and clawing, abusing whatever power they have, attempting to get to the next level of power, knowing full well that opportunities diminish with each promotion. Used to be that the upper echelons were mostly fairly ethical, straight arrow types while the folks at the bottom of the pile included a bunch that had no serious aspirations for grandeur. It was those guys in the middle you had to watch out for.
Thanks for the reminder, Hondo! Guess I’m agreeing with you, and hope that my long held opinion is still true.
I’d say that’s generally true in a civilian organization, OWB. There, “up or out” isn’t a consideration. Those with little ambition could stay where they were happy their entire career. In some respects, the enlisted side of the Guard and Reserve is that way; you do on occasion see a few “career E4s” in the Guard and Reserve. (It’s not completely so for the officer side – as I’ll discuss below.)
In such an organization, yes – I’d agree that in general the mid-grades are where the backstabbing is worst. However, IMO it doesn’t generally guarantee ethical conduct at the top; sometimes the entire corporate culture is flawed. See “Enron” for an example.
From my observations, the active military IMO works a bit differently, as does the officer side of the NG and Reserve. There, the pressure is “up or out” – e.g., there are set limits on time at the junior grades, and no promotion means you get “invited to leave” at some point. That would normally exacerbate the problem, but it’s balanced by a periodic screening process that weeds out those deemed unsuitable (every promotion board does that). So the net effect IMO is that a relatively larger fraction of those with major character flaws never reach the higher grades, because they can’t hide those flaws.
Unfortunately, a few are accomplished at masking major character flaws, and are also competent. Such individuals manage to “game the system” (or are smart enough to avoid showing their flaws when they’re likely to be caught) and advance. IMo it’s when such individuals with a talent for deceit do manage to attain a position of power that we see egregious military cases like the ones I offered as examples.
Again: I’m no shrink, and I could well be wrong. But what I just noted is based on approaching 4 decades now of close association with military organizations. I think I’m at least “in the ballpark” here.
Hondo, thoughtful piece. I think Caro is right for the most part that power reveals. However, I think there are subsets of those who achieve power with the first being those that gradually and naturally gain power following a career path and doing their job better than most of their peers;and then there are those who start out their careers with a burning desire to achieve power so that they can impose their will and their ideas on others.
This second group isn’t corrupted by power; rather they themselves corrupt power to serve their own ends. These are dangerous people if those ends are not beneficial to those under their power. We can think of an endless stream of examples.
“When you have enough power to do what you always wanted to do, then you see what the guy always wanted to do.”
In my opinion, that right there is what makes Ronald Reagan a great president, leader, and man. Especially when compared to Clinton [spit].
Excellent analogy
GDcontractor, Yes and thank you sir! +100
Hondo. You provided the correct Acton quote, that power tends to corrupt. Caro, on the other hand, attributed to Acton that “all power corrupts.” And that’s a big difference and a big problem with Caro’s take. If power has the tendency to corrupt the individual who possesses it, then that tendency is something that can be resisted and overcome by the individual. But when power is itself regarded as corrupt, then of course it is inherently bad and the possessor of power it effectively at power’s mercy and under its control. Our Founding Fathers, the framers of our Constitution, recognized the tendency of power to corrupt and provided checks and balances, severe limitations and restrictions, to thwart the tendency of power to corrupt. (Of course, they recognized this as a matter of human nature, since Acton wasn’t yet around.) Many are the men who, for what they regarded as a damned good reason–even an altruistic one–abused the power that was entrusted to them. And we all carry within us the capability to do good and bad. So, I’ll remain in Acton’s camp on this believing, as I do, that power tends to corrupt.
Hondo, I think you are on to something. I’ve had up-close and personal experience with this, and when a person gets the power to make choices, the choices are indeed revealing.
I would add, though, that the decision to actually act in a corrupt manner often results in subsequent deterioration of both intellect and character.
I have observed this in several men. If you ask the wife of a man who cheats, or is an alcoholic, or does drugs, the stories will all be different, but there will be a common element: “He says the damnedest things.”
My theory is that corrupt decisions reverberate in a person, and the person will twist himself into a pretzel to justify his actions. That twisting does not stay confined to the original type of action.
So, I think you may be right: it is not power that corrupts. Power reveals. But a corrupt decision can be an inflection point where the character of a person begins to corrode.
There have been psychological studies
Um, GDContractor, that was paranormal studies, not powernormal studies. No thanks necessary.
The power at issue is the power to control others, whether it be a lone individual who is controlled, an army, or a country. A person who is taught to be fair, honest, and decent can cave to the tendency of power to corrupt when he has the power that he did not when those lessons were imparted to him. To think otherwise is to say that a man who is regarded as good, who practices in his daily life those teachings, cannot be corrupted by power. Instead, we are to believe that he was never good but it took his having power to reveal his true self to us. I can’t buy that. Examples abound and we can amass a list without end of people who, though rightly viewed as fair, honest, and decent, were given positions of power and were unable to resist the tendency of power to corrupt.
At some point during a rise the power, the ‘feedback loop’ collapse, in that one hears less direct criticism. A person at the bottom hears criticism all the time, from peers, supervisors, ect.
However, as they rise, the number of critics tends to shrink, and they are able to dismiss critics in a position under them. At the same time, it is very likely that they have been ‘right’ in going contrary to the advice of criticism, and less likely to heed advice.
And this is another reason why accountability, rule of law, free speech, and separation of powers are so crucial.
There is a bit of difference in Power and”
Absolute” Power, in my opinion. Absolute meaning there is no checks and balances.
I was able to see the difference in my tours as a Drill Instructor. Most of the training was done at MCRD, San Diego. We had a SOP for training that was enforced strictly because we were in a “Fish Bowl”.There were eyes and ears everywhere, Within a small area you had Sr officers and Enlisted from Base HQ plus over 40 company grade officers whose job was to enforce the SOP, as well as BN and Regimental Staff.
When rifle and field training took place in Camp Pendelton the supervision was waaaaayyyy down… Thata when DIs did a lot of stupid shit.
An interesting idea. I never looked at it that way before.
I’ve seen it happen where a person gains power, and their flaws are immediately brought to the surface, but it was my interpretation that the power had, as Acton said, corrupted rather than revealed. Power, when given to the wrong hands, can become as dangerous as giving a detonator to a toddler. There is no auto-control, or “dead man switch” on that.
As such, the power does not just reveal the flaw, it enhances it as well.
I always thought that another aspect of someone rising through the ranks is an erosion of values that leads to corruption. I’ve seen it before with little things at a lower level becoming bigger things at a higher level. I’ve seen lower echelon types take some free stuff, like a free lunch or tickets to a game. I’ve seen when a job goes south and a company knows most of the product isn’t to standard but it’s a consumable that won’t hurt anyone really at a lower quality level like a disposable product such as a mail advertising piece where the client is told the bad product they saw was only a fraction of the work when in reality it was all of the work. I’ve seen guys hide a subordinate’s poor performance, especially if there were the individual promoting that subordinate as a strong candidate. Over time these little lies erode some people’s value system, whether that’s because their value system was shaky already or not I’m not certain. Guys who never lied that I’m aware of before starting down this path become quite skilled as they are subtly acclimated to telling half-truths to make a sale, close a deal, or meet a deadline without jeopardizing their position. When that guy gets to the next level the subtle lies become a bit larger, and I see guys who eventually end up in deep over their heads. Other guys are blessed with subordinates who cover their inadequacies and make that guy look good in spite of his fabrications. Eventually they do something to get themselves sacked, but I’m not certain it was always a character flaw so much as a systemic cultural erosion of the boundaries. Many organizations lie to themselves about what they are doing and how well they do it. When those lies become embedded in the culture it produces managers, officers, and worker bees who have to buy into the self-told lie or those who don’t fail to advance or succeed. One of my jobs in dealing with color science in the printing industry is explaining exactly… Read more »
I like to think of it as not just Acton’s ‘power’ quote, but also to mix in the phrase “drunk on power”. Drunkenness, as I think PH2 observed, does not cause anything new but rather exposes what has already been there: the fella who becomes abusive of combative, etc. The drunk who supposedly changes was always the person they show when drunk – thy just reveal it when under the influence. Just as the majority of folks who drink do so responsibly and don’t abuse it, the majority of those with power(say, in the sample professions mentioned of cops, clergymen, etc.) don’t abuse their power. But there are those, like drunks displaying character flaws or alcoholics who can’t stop drinking, who do abuse power or misuse what they do have.
Hondo, thank you for this article. I now agree with you and Caro that power reveals far more about a person than it corrupts. We see it here with phoney military lies and especially in embellished careers. They have the power to know HOW to embellish, sometimes in a quite detailed manner. It shows their corruption in using the power of their knowledge but more than this, it reveals the truth of their character. (I think this sounded disjointed. Sorry.)