Dow Jones Interactive

EDITORIAL
OP-Ed; Next in line to resign? If not, don't speak up
Thomas M. Keane Jr.

12/18/2002
Boston Herald
All Editions
031
(Copyright 2002)

I'm thinking of resigning.

From what, I don't know. But suddenly, it seems, everyone is doing it.

Boston University President Jon Westling resigned in July, followed soon after by the university's chairman, Richard DeWolfe. Former Maine Sen. George Mitchell resigned from President George Bush's Sept. 11 panel before he ever really took the job. Henry Kissinger quickly followed suit.

The list goes on. Former FBI head William Webster just resigned from an accounting reform board. State licensing boss William Wood gave notice a few weeks ago. The three-member Hopkinton board of health is contemplating resigning en masse. Two key special- education employees in the Groton Dunstable school district recently left. No one knows why. It just seemed the thing to do.

Al Gore over the weekend resigned from the 2004 presidential race. Gore had promised to wait until after Christmas to make his decision, but resignation fever got the better of him. So he called up "60 Minutes."

That's Al Gore. Always on the cutting edge.

Resignation is now part of the zeitgeist, a fad like cocaine in the '80s. Everyone seems to want to do it, even if it's bad for you.

Some manage it well, others quite poorly.

For many, it's done quietly and with a bit of dignity. That was the case with Bush's economic team: Paul O'Neill, Lawrence Lindsey and Harvey Pitt. One day they're running the U.S. economy. The next day they're collecting unemployment. On the way out, they praise the guy who just booted them.

That also should have been the case with acting Gov. Jane Swift's cabinet secretaries. Mitt Romney has asked for their resignations. Most meekly complied.

But a few, adopting a "do not go gentle into that good night" strategy, were more truculent.

Lillian Glickman, secretary of Elder Affairs, resisted. She appealed up the ladder of command, coming up with increasingly strained excuses why she should stay.

James Jajuga and Robert Durand, respectively secretaries of Public Safety and Environmental Affairs, did her one better. They organized lobbying campaigns and wrote lengthy reports documenting their momentous achievements.

The inevitable upshot of this tactic? They're gone.

Even better, however, is the extended apology leading toward resignation. Erstwhile gubernatorial candidate Joseph ("I am so very sorry, so very sorry") Kennedy made use of that strategy in 1997. He coupled his apology with a vociferous insistence that he was still committed to running for governor.

Predictably enough, a few months later he was out of the race.

Recently, of course, Bernard Cardinal Law adopted the same approach. Originally, Law denied it all, blaming the press ("We call down God's power on the media," he said in 1992). That worked for 10 years, but eventually the hesitating apologies began. "I wish to apologize," Law said last January - not for anything he did, mind you, but just in case anyone was wondering.

Four months later, Law proffered there were "terrible mistakes."

It still wasn't enough. As the weeks wore on, the apologies became more detailed, more abject, until by November the cardinal was saying, "I beg forgiveness."

After that, a resignation seemed unavoidable.

Now, close on his heels, Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) is following the same pattern. At a retirement party for Strom Thurmond, Lott said, "We wouldn't be in the mess we are today" if Thurmond's segregationist Dixiecrat presidential bid had prevailed in 1948.

When questioned, Lott said he simply was paying "tribute."

That didn't work, so Lott then issued the artful non-apology apology: "I apologize to anyone who was offended by my statement."

Dec. 11 saw apology No. 2. I was "insensitive," Lott allowed.

And so they came, nearly one a day, each one more publicly agonized than the last. His remarks were a "grievous mistake," Lott finally admitted. "Repugnant." Lott has even gone so far as to say he now supports affirmative action and a holiday for Martin Luther King Jr.

Translation? It's only a matter of days.

And then there are those for whom resignation might seem inevitable and yet, somehow, they hang on.

After the November elections, Democrats started calling for the head of Philip Johnston, leader of the Massachusetts Democratic Party. Johnston's reaction? No apologies, no excuses, no extensive defense of his record.

The same happened with University of Massachusetts President William Bulger. After pleading the Fifth before a congressional committee, almost everybody except for university trustees was urging him to resign.

And from Bulger? A stonewall.

Caught up in resignation frenzy, we wonder how to manage our exits. Be dignified? Fight? Apologize?

Not Johnston or Bulger. They're staying put. For they have learned the most important rule of resignations: If you don't want to go, keep your mouth shut.

Tom Keane may be reached at TomKeane@TomKeane.com.