Joseph Califano's moral compass.
Joseph Califano was interviewed by Brian Lamb on C-SPAN's
Booknotes, May 23, 2004 concerning his new book
Inside: A Public and Private Life .
Near the beginning he was asked
about why he wrote the book and he responded:
And the other thing was, I think it's very important for
people with public power to have a moral compass. Now,
mine happened to be my Catholic faith and what I believe in.
And there are lots of different moral compasses, and people
have them. But it is important to have that. You can't
exercise public power amorally. It's -- especially in a
democracy, and especially where government is now so powerful.
Then later when talking about the Watergate tapes and Nixon he says:
Al (Haig) called me and said, you know, if you were me, what would you
advise Nixon to do about the tapes? And I said, look, Al, I'm
not your lawyer. And he said, yeah, but just if you were me.
I said, if I were you, I'd tell Nixon to burn the tapes. And he
said, well, that would be a terrible problem. I said, look,
it would be a terrible firestorm. All hell will break loose.
I understand that. But it will be over in three weeks.
If that's not amoral behavior, I don't know what is.
But my guess is that Califano, a lawyer and a politician is
not capable of seeing that. What happened to his Catholic faith
and moral compass?