Posted by
Defend America on Saturday, February 06, 2010 10:25:59 PM
By James M. Thunder
On December 11, 2009, columnist David Brooks repeated a
story on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer that he had said in an
interview in the Atlantic on the Monday before President
Obama's election. On December 11, it was in the context of the
President's speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. On the Monday
before the election, it was in the context of his argument that
President Bush and Republican vice-presidential candidate Palin's
were anti-intellectual:
Obama has the great intellect. I was interviewing Obama a
couple years ago, and I'm getting nowhere with the interview,
it's late in the night, he's on the phone, walking off the
Senate floor, he's cranky. Out of the blue I say, "Ever read a
guy named Reinhold Niebuhr?" And he says, "Yeah." So I say,
"What did Niebuhr mean to you?" For the next 20 minutes, he
gave me a perfect description of Reinhold Niebuhr's thought,
which is a very subtle thought process based on the idea
that you have to use power while it corrupts you. And I
was dazzled, I felt the tingle up my knee as Chris Matthews
would say.
Knowing what we know about President Obama, it is more
likely that he thought of power corrupting with respect to our
Nation, rather than with respect to the Democratic Party or
himself personally. But let us assume Brooks' report is accurate
-- and I reply that power need not corrupt our officials.
Let's make this a column even more interactive than
usual.
In comments you post below, please identify any American
official of local, state or federal government, at any time in
our history, who resigned his or her position voluntarily (that
is, without being fired or yielding to a public outcry) when
something went amiss on his or her watch, but for which the
official was not personally responsible. (So, by these criteria,
the official's extramarital activities do not qualify.) Please
identify name, position, approximate year of resignation, and, in
a brief sentence, describe the event that caused the
resignation.
FOR MY PART, let me name one. And I'll write more than
a brief sentence about him.
When the event occurred in 1803 that prompted his voluntary
resignation, Edward Livingston occupied not just one, but two,
prominent positions. He was an appointed mayor of New York
(before it became Greater New York) and the U.S. Attorney for the
District of New York. The mayoralty was highly desirable --
enough that DeWitt Clinton resigned his U.S. Senate seat to fill
the vacancy Livingston created when he resigned. And the U.S.
Attorney position was a presidential appointment, confirmed by
the Senate, and its territory was the entire state of New York
(now New York is divided into four districts). It was not a
salaried position, but it was lucrative since remuneration came
from fees.
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/01/29/honor-and-taking-responsibilit/