Cherry Trees and Borrowed Books

Back in my grade school days (and probably for most who attended grade school back in the seventies), February was the month to honor the presidents--in particular, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln since February was their birth month. There were often art projects that involved cutting out silhouettes of the two men's profiles, and read-aloud time usually included two famous stories.

The first--which we now know is legend--was the story of Washington as a boy. In a moment of weakness, he chopped down his father's cherry tree. As all of us seventies children know, when Washington's perturbed father confronted him, young George did the right thing by admitting his wrongdoing: "I cannot tell a lie, father. It was I." While we children understood that chopping down that cherry tree was definitely the wrong thing to do, this future president foreshadowed the courage and honesty that would one day make him the heroic general who would become the first president of the United States. The moral: Great leaders are honest. They might mess up in some ways, but they would never tell a lie.

And then there was Honest Abe. As if the nickname alone weren't enough, we heard stories of Honest Abe walking twenty miles to return a borrowed book. The moral: Great leaders are responsible and always keep their promises. They put the needs of others before their own personal comfort. Personal integrity certainly is something that should be characteristic of anyone who holds public office.

Today, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told the press, "The bar that we set is the highest that any administration in the country has ever set."

Really? So what morals will the children of two hundred years from now learn from the read-aloud stories derived from this administration?

Perhaps one will be that a president doesn't really need to keep promises after he or she has been elected. It's all well and good to appoint former lobbyists to work in areas for which they've lobbied, even if you've promised not to do that--if they're really, really good at what they do and if their knowledge will further the agenda of the administration.

Another moral will be that if you appear to be sorry enough and pay back the taxes that you owe once you've been caught in tax "mistakes," you could still serve as the treasury secretary. But a combination of lobbying and tax indiscretions will disqualify you from a political appointment.

Ill-advisedly pardoning criminals in a previous administration is definitely part of high bar-setting. Looking the other way to set free a friend of the president who is guilty of tax evasion, fraud, racketeering, and funding America's enemies is a great credential for an attorney general.

In fact, the moral, as our president explained in his inaugural address, is that we measure things by whether they work. George could have served his country just as well if he framed the neighbor boy for chopping down that cherry tree and had never been found out. And if the person twenty miles away had forgotten his loaned book, Abe would have been perfectly justified in hanging onto it, especially since he was probably poorer than the person he borrowed it from.

And if you're bored by read-aloud time, maybe you could just play with your handheld electronic device, text message your friends, or sleep. The moral: Read-aloud time and stories extolling the virtues of former presidents may not be what works best for you. Practicing what works best for you--and getting away with it--may just be the best possible training for a career in politics.