On Accountability

I was raised in a very small town in Indiana – Covington, situated near the Illinois border and with a population of around 2400 people. My entire county held less than eighteen thousand people. Indiana is an interesting state – it has a few large population centers (Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Gary, and Evansville) and then some larger towns (Bloomington, Terre Haute, Lafayette, and others). It other words, it’s a fairly small state, and it acts like one.

The Indiana Legislature still meets part time – they have a simple criminal code – and I enjoyed the simplicity of life there. I prefer where I live today, mind you, but I enjoyed living in Indiana as well – it was a great place to grow up – and I learned much while living there.

One of the principles that I learned – from Indiana as well as my parents – was accountability. One should be held responsible for their actions.

This was played out in my home in the same way that it is in millions of homes around the world – when I did something that I should not have done, I was punished. I learned quite quickly that for all actions there were consequences.

I saw this close-up and personal in dealing with my father’s family – with the exception of my father and I believe one of his half-brothers – his entire family was in and out of the criminal justice system for much of their lives. I saw what happened when one went astray.

Indeed, small town justice was played out as well in the local courts. Being my county was so small, we had one judge, who was highly respected around town. He gave one many chances, but was unafraid to drop the hammer on someone when needed – and those stories reverberated around the county rapidly.

It wasn’t just in the criminal justice system though that things were played out. For all that people talk about the directness of folks who live in the Northeast – you haven’t seen direct until you’ve been on the receiving end of feedback from someone from the midwest who realizes that some things just need to be said.

My employer as well encourages an environment of accountability – we’re held strictly accountable for our results, leadership, and behaviors, and I would have it no other way. It encourages an environment of meritocracy – of directness – and of performance – and I love them for it.

Which brings me to my point.

I’ve long been a supporter of President Bush. I did not vote for him in the 2000 elections – haven’t supported the Libertarian Candidate Harry Browne. But 9/11 changed all of that – and I saw a strong leader emerge – and he did exactly what I would hope I would have the courage to do in his shoes.

I was a supporter as well of our efforts in Iraq. I fully buy into the theories advanced by Victor Davis Hanson and others that we must confront evil wherever it may be – and Iraq was certainly evil – no need to repeat those crimes here.

And I believed that they had or were working on the capabilities to have – Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

And then we found that they did not – or at least that seems to be the conventional wisdom in the world right now.

I still believe we did the right thing – but there’s a huge piece to this that troubles me.

Someone fucked up.

If the President acted in good faith and received bad intelligence – then there’s a serious problem with the intelligence community – or staffers that “sexed up” the intelligence – but clearly there’s someone or many people at fault.

I can understand this. I often make to make decisions based upon a few seconds of information from someone in the thick of a crisis – and I have to trust them explicitly – and the decisions that I make based on what they tell me could cost me my job. If I can trust someone, they can’t be on my team – just for this reason.

So I ask – where’s the accountability.

If the President acted in good faith – and the intelligence was wrong – then George Tenet needs to be fired.

Not asked to resign – fired.

If someone else was at fault – or many people – then they need to be fired too.

This is truly the highest stakes poker game in the world – there’s no room to hang a curveball — but that’s exactly what has happened here. And there has to be accountability.

In my world, when a leader fails to hold their team accountable when they need to do so, then the leader becomes the performance problem. This situation is no different.

Without accountability, I will not vote for George Bush in 2004. I won’t vote for John Kerry either, mind you, but I’m not going to support the President.

Hold someone accountable – or be held accountable.