Paraphrasing, the question was asked, HOW/WHY is it that the Bush Maladministration is, well, so extraordinarily ham-handed in its indiscretions? The answer came to me in a flash: The GOP has no compliance capabilties whatsoever. Moreover, those in the White House and the Maladministration who are emerging as taking actions in violation of one standard after another don't even know what compliance, as a term of art, means.
Organizations operating in our modern society have a high-stakes burden to bear: COMPLIANCE. Compliance, in fact, is more than a behavior; it is a specific discipline. Every large organization I can think of, manufacturers, charities, publicly traded companies, universities, banks and on and on and on have actual compliance specialists, if not full-fledged compliance departments.
Often, the compliance officers I know of are not even attorneys. They are business specialists who have been schooled and are skilled in understanding the legal and regulatory environment in which their peers must operate. There are things that must be done, things that can't be done, and things that shouldn't be done, if nothing else, for cosmetic purposes.
This is different from the role of the lawyer or the legal department, which generally gives an interpretation on black-letter law and handles issues like contracts and litigation management. Some companies have other specialists, in risk and risk management -- not from an insurance approach, but further upstream, looking at company operations from the perspective of what could go wrong with a practice or course of action, what could the consequences be and, can the consequences be managed in a worse-case scenario by contingency management or funding.
Compliance is often the first line of defense against organizational folly. A dispute between line staff and compliance may sometimes be taken to the lawyers and/or risk managers, and once all the consequences of an action are understood, sometimes it comes down to management making an informed decision about a deal, or a new product or service, so it's not like compliance, legal and risk are stone walls.
As an organizational discipline, it is right in there with human resources, media relations, government relations, finance, technology, etc. etc. etc., as a "support service" that lets the managers, marketing and sales staff do whatever their jobs are to keep the organization moving toward its mission. It is my experience that compliance folks are not well liked by those who do the "real work" but neither are the lawyers or risk managers -- they just get in the way, they're the "deal killers," the "office of business prevention" and so on. But a compliance function is an absolute necessity when running a factory or a large retail chain or a hospital or many, many other endeavors (like, say, a major political party).
Watching the clip of Lurita Doan's testimony on "GSAgate" I was struck by two things: The actions in question seem to be a clear violation of the Hatch Act and what was GSA thinking? How did this get so far?
There can be a lot of arrogance or just plain criminal conduct involved in organizations gone sorely wrong, such as Enron, WorldCom and other notable private-sector meltdowns, but with GSA, as with the "amending" of scientific reports, the hiring of journalists to slant the news, using an insecure, private email server for official White House correspondence, the horrendous misspending of money in Iraq, even the Abu Ghraib torture scandal and literally dozens if not hundreds of other examples over the past six years, it seems that the one recurring element in each scandal is this:
NO SANE COMPLIANCE OFFICER WOULD HAVE STOOD BY AND LET IT HAPPEN! In fact, the recurring disregard of the most basic tenets of legal, regulatory and ethical compliance is so extreme, it goes beyond "management" (i.e, the POTUS, V-POTUS, and cabinet-level agencies and the departments within them) taking a calculated risk. It is sheer idiocy. Anyone whose actual job it is to see to it that there is some kind of functioning within these recognized norms would simply quit, or might just be a total waste of perfectly good blood and organs.
The only thing I can conclude is, the Bushites are at times contemptuous of the need for government to abide by its own rules, but, given the repeated blatant and almost amateurish transgressions we have seen, they seem to be consistently ignorant of the most basic compliance concepts.
We all know Lurita Doan was lying in her testimony. Watch the tape. She refused to acknowledge things that are obvious to anyone looking at the political presentation given to GSA staff. Look at her highly arched eyebrows -- a telltale sign of a liar trying to be convincing. There is no way in hell she doesn't remember her own statements when others in the room do remember them, consistently and across the board. But she's not the only ignorant actor; that Jennings guy from the White House was just as inept to think such a presentation was a proper subject matter for GSA appointees.
So why would she have engaged in such an obvious and undisguised violation of federal law? She probably didn't know she was in violation. Now that's no excuse. The sins of this Maladministration are many, but where they have transgressed law and regulation, whether done in ignorance or willful disregard is not relevant. These seem (I've not researched them personally) to be strict liability standards, meaning intent is not a factor: a violation is a violation, whether it was with awareness or unawareness, intentional or unintentional.
Apart from the blatant dishonesty, arrogance, greed and incompetence, these people are compliance morons. They don't even know to stop and ask the question. If they knew more about the standards they were violating you and I know they would have been more clever going about it.
But they never had to learn. They never had oversight. They are strangers in a strange land, and it's too late for them to adapt. And there seem to be enough honest people (or those fearful of a perjury rap) in government, that the stories are eking out, bleeding the GOP in a death by a thousand cuts.
Serves 'em right. Serves 'em all right. I hope the Dems investigate right up through their election recess in 2008. Trust me: It'll be even BETTER than an impeachment.