Lunch at the Labs

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? Posted by mjm at May 31, 2004 09:09 PM