Glenn Greenwald: Don't forget about Beltway cowardice

Corruption and dishonesty are among the Washington vices which receive substantial attention, but cowardice is often overlooked, despite how pervasive it is. The news cycle of the last two days has been driven by an attack on organized labor from a "senior White House official" who was willing to express these views only while hiding behind the fetal wall of anonymity extended by Politico. Last night on The Ed Show, United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard was asked about those comments and this is what he said:



That there is no remote journalistic justification for granting anonymity for these kinds of catty comments is self-evident, but that's not worth discussing, since the Drudgeified Politico has long ago established that they operate without any ethical constraints of any kind when it comes to such matters. The only anonymity standard Politico has is this: we grant it automatically the minute someone in power wants it (though on some level, in a warped sort of way, that's almost more admirable than what the NYT and Post do: pretend that they have strict anonymity standards while basically handing it out as promiscuously as Politico does). But what is striking is how often top White House officials -- who are among the most politically powerful people in the country -- are willing to inject views into the public discourse only if they can be assured that they will never be accountable for what they say. That is just unadulterated cowardice.

I suppose this shouldn't be particularly surprising. Washington is a culture of cowardice. It's filled with people who systematically suppress (or never develop) genuine convictions for the sake of career advancement, who continuously advocate wars which only other people fight and against countries which cannot defend themselves, who are secrecy-obsessed and whose most significant acts take place in the dark in order to avoid consequences and accountability. Still, the long-standing propensity of White House officials to cower behind anonymity even to spit the most trivial insults -- remember this and this and this and this? -- stands out as particularly weak and pathetic. There are obviously times when anonymity is justified and necessary -- when someone powerless is risking something substantial to reveal serious wrongdoing by those who wield power -- but these cases are the opposite. Just ponder the character of the "senior White House official" who was so angry about what labor leaders did in Arkansas that s/he just had to call Ben Smith in order to stoke divisions between unions and their members by criticizing their actions, but then pleaded: "don't use my name when you publish my comments." That's what Washington is filled with, and it's why Washington is what it is.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2010/06/11/cowardice