Why Accountability is Important

Warning. This is a long post. I've put most of it below the jump.

As a private practice lawyer with a litigation practice, I have a staff. It's not large, but I have a paralegal and a legal assistant. They follow my directions and take care of things that don't necessarily need a lawyer to handle. They help with filing documents, scheduling hearings, and coming up with first drafts of documents for my review.

However, if a deadline is missed or a document isn't filed correctly, that's my fault. I'm the one who signs the pleadings, and I'm the one who is in charge. The buck stops with me. As a hypothetical: even if the mistake is that my legal assistant forgot to call the court reporter for the deposition, I would take the responsibility when I talk to either the client or opposing counsel. I don't say: My assistant forgot to arrange for the court reporter. Instead, I tell the client: I didn't arrange for the court reporter; that's my fault.

No one likes a leader who blames their subordinates for mistakes. It looks weasel-y, and I think that my staff works well to know that I have their back. Now, even though I take responsibility to the client or the opposing counsel, I'm still going to have a serious conversation with my assistant. I'm going to let him/her know that they screwed up, and they should have called the court reporter. However, I handle that privately; in house.

That's how accountability works in my office. It works well for me. Clients and opposing counsel know that I am ultimately responsible for what goes on. It ensures that when I delegate, I make sure that things are getting done. My staff knows that I'll go to bat for them outside the office, but they also know that I am there to make sure they are doing things correctly.

Now, that's contrasted with what I see going on in the government. In the parade of problems that we see with government, the one common denominator is a lack of accountability. Let's go through some specific examples:

1. Benghazi: There were security problems at the US consulate in Benghazi, and that led to the death our the US Ambassador and several others. Has anyone really stepped up to the plate and said Yeah, I screwed this up. It's my fault that these people died. Here's what we did wrong, and here's what we should have done. Nope. We got the usual song and dance from everyone involved that this is a tragedy and it doesn't make any difference now, and we'll investigate things, and yeah....nothing ever really happens. Time marches on and things just fade away.
2. IRS Abuse. The IRS abused its power in giving certain political opponents a hard time. Has anyone come out and said; Yeah, we kind of got carried away there. Oops. Here's what we did wrong, and here's who did it, and we've come up with the following discipline to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again. Nope. We just got people taking the fifth, then refusing to cooperate, stonewalling, and....nothing really happens. Time marches on and things just fade away.
3. Total Failure of Implementation of the Affordable Care Act. It's a disaster. Even though I think it's a really bad idea, it needs to be implemented correctly so we can see the bad results and then decide not to do this on the merits. Rather than the head of HHS coming out and saying Hey everyone. I didn't get this done correctly, and it's my fault, but here's what we're going to do to get back on track...you just get talk of "glitches" and blame on everyone else, always going to subordinates.

In each of these instances, the President basically came out and told the American people Hey, I didn't know about all these problems and bad decisions until you did. I'm upset too! Well...the follow up question that no one seems to be asking the President is: Ok, you didn't know about this. Why not?

Isn't the President in charge? I believe he's the Executive. Now, I know that you're going to say that I'm not being fair to the President. He can't know everything that goes on! He's got to delegate and hire people to do things for him on certain details. Well, that's right. The President doesn't know everything that goes on, and he does have to appoint subordinates to take care of details. But think about this:

Football teams have a head coach. For instance, the head coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks is Steve Spurrier. Coach Spurrier knows how to coach all aspects of the team, but he's especially good at coaching offense, so he mostly focuses on that. He has a head defensive coach, a coach for the offensive line, a coach for the defensive line, a coach for the secondary, and so on. Spurrier doesn't coach every aspect of every part of the team, because that's just not possible. He can't be everywhere at once and know everything that goes one. He's got subordinates for that.

But you know what, campers?

When the Gamecocks lose (and boy do we ever) Spurrier is the one who comes out and says Yeah, I guess I'm not coaching very well. I need to do a better job. When Georgia beat the Gamecocks this year, Spurrier came out and admitted that Georgia played better football. He didn't blame his defensive coaches, or say that the strength and conditioning staff didn't do a good job. And there's a good reason why.

Spurrier made the decision to hire those guys. If his choice for a defensive line coach isn't a good one, that's doubly the head coach's fault. He shouldn't have hired him, and he should have recognized that the junior coach was doing a poor job.

And it's the same thing with the President. He didn't personally screw up the implementation of the website. But he picked the person who oversaw the implementation. He gave the HHS secretary the assignment, and then she delegated further. But apparently, there was no following up by the superior to the subordinate. And now that everything's gone to hell, you have a bunch of people at the top standing around and saying Hey, I didn't know things were so screwed up.

Well damn. That's your whole job. It's your job to know whether things are screwed up or not. It's your job to know what's going on. So you're either bad at your job or you're willfully ignorant. If people below you aren't telling you what is going on, you can either fire them and the new people will tell you about problems, or you keep who you have, and continue to be willfully ignorant.

So what's my point? My point is not a political one. It's not a political problem for one "team" or another. Yeah, the Democratic party is in charge right now, but there's plenty of GOP examples of lack of accountability out there. I'm not making this point to say that one party is good and the other party is bad. It goes on with both parties.

The real problem is that this chronic lack of accountability undermines the confidence that people have in the government. People are starting to just shrug their shoulders and give up. And that's bad. I talk to people who just seem resigned that the people in government don't care about getting things right, they just care about protecting their jobs. Politicians won't admit mistakes out of feat that the other side will make them look bad, when it's themselves who made themselves look bad.

I don't think our democratic republic and withstand a lack of accountability. The people we elect have to be able to stand up and say that they messed up. Mistakes are inevitable. We're human. Mistakes and mismanagement is a part of the human condition. But I also know that mistakes are less likely to happen when people know they will be held accountable.

But that's not the current situation in our government right now. It looks like we have willful ignorance at the top.