I live and blog in a small rural town, of about fourteen thousand people, and one often imagines that such places are preserves of plain-speaking officials and straight-talking politicians. I suppose that many rural American towns are like that.
We’re not one of them.
Governance — official action first and foremost through law and legal tradition — has given way to Management. Not fine and serious management, but grandiose claims, excuse-making, and rationalization.
One may hear the words accountability and responsibility, but the vocabulary does not match bureaucratic conduct.
The making of excuses and distortions from bureaucrats in Whitewater, Wisconsin has become a cottage industry, publicly-funded. One need only search this website for an account of false and self-serving claims from Whitewater’s leaders.
There’s a telling sign elsewhere, though: on the City of Whitewater’s website, at the page offering a description of Whitewater’s police chief, Jim Coan.
Here’s the description:
Jim Coan was appointed Chief of Police for the City of Whitewater in 1992. He is ultimately responsible for the management, operation, and representation of the Whitewater Police Department and its employees. Chief Coan holds a Masters Degree in Criminal Justice from Michigan State University and a Bachelors Degree from Northern Michigan University. Previous to his present position he served as a Captain with the Appleton, Wisconsin Police Department.
It’s odd, how the page describes Coan as “ultimately” responsible. It’s not how ordinary people speak — not how the sort of people who are, truly, plain speaking and straight talking would decribe
responsibility. They’d just say a police chief, city manager, etc. is responsible for something. They’d wisely describe responsibility this way: A captain is responsible for his ship, a shephered for his sheep, etc.
Truman didn’t say that the Buck Ultimately Stops Here. He would have been laughed at if he did. Ultimately, as though there were intermediate steps on which he could cast blame if something went wrong. The mention of intermediate steps would have, of course, undermined a plain and clear acceptance of responsibility.
One word wouldn’t matter, were it not a reflection of a long tenure of blame-shifting, excuse-making, and grandiose self-praise so typical of Coan’s leadership. The word’s a consequence, not a cause, of leadership at odds with the values that any town should embrace.
There are, I’d say, two other possibilities for the choice of the word, neither favorable to Coan or the city government he ill-serves. The first is that he’s trying to make himself even more important, by adding ‘ultimately,’ as though he sits at the top of a high ladder, stretching far into the clouds. I’d say this is a possibility, but none to Coan’s credit. (Quick note to Coan: Whatever your lofty self-opinion, it’s not you at the top of that ladder. Gn. 28:13.)
There’s a second possibilty: that Coan’s description says “ultimately responsible” because there’s some confusion in the city about authority between Coan, Whitewater’s Police & Fire Commission, and the Whitewater city manager. There’s no reasonable way that there could be confusion between these groups, but there might be a way in which there’s confusion among these three authorities, in this town. Embarrassing, but possible.
No matter the reason, the qualified description of Coan’s responsibility is a regrettable departure from the clear and plain traditions of a small American town.