May 30, 1973
Page 17283
LEADERS MUST TELL TRUTH
Mr. HART. Mr. President, on Memorial Day, Mr. MUSKIE, the senior Senator from Maine,., spoke at commemorative services at the grave of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park, N.Y.
In his remarks, Mr. MUSKIE contrasted President Roosevelt's press conferences twice a week and his fireside chats with the Nation to the tone of the present administration. It is a vivid contrast. I ask unanimous consent that the full text of his remarks be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the statement was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
LEADERS MUST TELL TRUTH
(By Senator MUSKIE)
Today, when America invokes the memory of all her military heroes, I have the great honor of recalling the memory of one special soldier, the man who earned for himself the title he gave another, that of "Happy Warrior."
In this simple ceremony, in this quiet and lovely place, among his friends and family and neighbors, I can only offer to Franklin Roosevelt the tribute of a young man for whom he was a hero and of a politician for whom he remains a model. The hope he gave to a Nation in despair, the energy he gave to government action for recovery, the leadership he gave to democracy in peril and the ethical standards he set for all those who hold public office – these are the legacies of his greatness. No words of mine can add either to his memory or to the respect in which Americans will always hold it.
So I would prefer to talk briefly about one of the essential attributes of his life and his conduct of government, the confidence he showed in the judgment of the people and the vitality he gave to the task of informing that judgment. In an era when popular opinion is manipulated more than it is trusted, we do well to understand the example of Franklin Roosevelt as a leader who taught Americans again to trust themselves.
Just before the 1936 Presidential election, Felix Frankfurter wrote his friend, "Frank," to compliment him on this campaign. The professor told his eminent pupil, "... in a democracy the essence of true politics is popular education." Then, after the returns were in, Mr. Frankfurter wrote again that the President's reelection was a tribute to "a people whom the hard school of experience and the greatest national educator since Jefferson taught to discriminate between fraud and fact, between fear and reason."
President Roosevelt was as much a teacher as his friend, the Harvard professor. In a time of unreasoning fear, he taught America how to renew its confidence. In the midst of upheaval, he schooled the Nation to be wary of extreme theories. And in a period of danger to all democracies, he prepared America to be worthy of its world responsibilities.
He instructed, of course, by action and decision. But he decided and he acted in the open, in a swirl of conflicting views and pressures, in a turbulence of special pleaders and a tumult of antagonistic advocates. In the center of this political cyclone, the President's voice seems never to have been silent. He talked all the time, to everyone. He talked to his supporters and advisers, and he talked to his opponents. Most important of all, he talked to the press.
After watching a Presidential press conference forty years ago – and they were held then twice a week with the only ground rules being that President Roosevelt's words were not to be directly quoted – Harold Ickes put the following notation in his diary:
– he answered every question that he could answer, and when he didn't know the answer he frankly said so. There was no subterfuge, no beating around the bush. All was frank, open and above board. It isn't any wonder that the newspaper correspondents like him and his methods ...
This constant communication by the President to the people set a whole new tone for the conduct of government. The candor may not always have been complete, but the attempt at it was sincere, and the atmosphere it created was contagious. Exposing his own views to the reporters – even while he roundly denounced the views of their publishers – President Roosevelt made disclosure routine. He earned confidence by giving it.
In a fireside chat 35 years ago last month, he set out the philosophy that explained his practice.
"The only sure bulwark of liberty," he said, "is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over its government."
The balance between strong government and strong popular control of it has been the essence of modern American democracy. But that balance has always been delicate. Lacking Franklin Roosevelt's profound commitment to the process of popular education, we have experienced a growing rift between the leaders and the led.
In the name of national security, officials have built a wall between their actions and those in whose name they act. Inside that wall – in a world of obsessive secrecy – crucial decisions have been made and important policies set in motion. But those decisions and policies have been immunized against the healthy skepticism of a people who, by nature and tradition, question any concentration of unsupervised government power.
Spreading secrecy made supervision impossible. And that same secrecy carried a special corruption to those under its spell. Working only with information deemed too sensitive to share, those in authority lost their ability to weigh – perhaps even to hear – the criticisms of others who had solid instinct, but lacked privileged knowledge. They equated secret data with undisputed fact and mistook classification markings for proofs of accuracy.
Secrecy encouraged isolation. Isolation inspired contempt for uninformed opposition. Contempt bred conspiracy. And imperceptibly but inevitably the inhabitants of the world of secrecy came to see themselves as men apart, menaced by unreasoning, ignorant and, ultimately, subversive forces.
In such a poisoned and unreal atmosphere, the binding principles of democratic fair play were easily laid aside. Dissent came to be seen as a threat to national security. National security came to be seen as the exclusive concern of an elite. The elite naturally identified its continuation in power as essential to national security. And, to ensure its retention of authority, the elite came to adopt tactics which, in any other situation, would have been repugnant.
National security became the excuse for systematic deception. The defenders of policies felt unable to answer their challengers with facts and reason. Their strongest arguments allegedly required continued secrecy. They could not tell what they thought was the truth. So they began not to tell the truth. They began to lie.
When truth must be suppressed, when misinformation must be dealt out to divert inquiry, lying comes as a natural consequence. Journalists who must be intimidated, not informed, must also be told untruths. Political critics – members of Congress – who must be punished for voicing their opposition must also be deceived and denied access to the truth.
And, of course, secrecy permits those who practice it to regard themselves as safe from exposure. Lying is acceptable because the truth will never be disclosed. Foul play gains sanction from the belief that it will go unpunished.
Frank communication withers within the government and between the government and the people. Seclusion deepens, and conspiracy flourishes.
As public trust diminishes, private trust is eroded. Officials must spy on each other to insure that secrecy is not violated. Those who question the practices of the secret world – who threaten to disclose those practices – who break their oaths of secrecy – must be discredited, punished, cast out.
We are now witnessing – to our sorrow and horror – the unfolding of one such tragic cycle, a political episode hatched in secrecy, tangled in deception and fertilized by distrust. From the imperfect knowledge we now have and from the experience we have gained from other instances of similar official misconduct, we must draw again the lesson Franklin Roosevelt never needed to be taught.
Candor wins confidence. Truth generates trust. For a democratic government, as much as for a private individual, honesty is not only the best but the only policy.
Integrity may be inconvenient in a world where it is far from the universal practice. But the pursuit of national interests – of national security – cannot succeed in a moral vacuum. To win our way in the world, we must hold to the values in whose name we struggle – the precepts of generosity, of idealism, of tolerance and of truth which America has translated from individual virtues into civic standards.
Franklin Roosevelt always understood that moral imperative. The greatness he brought to America's government mirrored the greatness of America's faith that men can govern themselves, can choose between right and wrong policies, can bargain openly in the marketplace of ideas and can strike the proper balance between private interest and the public good.
Secrecy upsets that balance. It corrupts the commerce of ideas. It blurs the distinction between right and wrong, and it erodes the foundation of self-government.
"Sunlight," Justice Holmes observed, "is the best disinfectant." Franklin Roosevelt, the warrior whose happy creed we commemorate today, always fought in the sunlight. We honor his memory best by pursuing his example now.