Lucy P. Marcus
Lucy P. Marcus, founder and CEO of
Marcus Venture Consulting, Ltd., is Professor of Leadership and
Governance at IE Business School and a non-executive board director of
Atlantia SpA.
LONDON
– From the moment Donald Trump entered the US presidential race, the
potential for an unprecedented array of ethics violations, stemming from
his global business interests, has been a ticking time bomb, set to
detonate on January 20, 2017.
Boom.
Plenty of other
liberal democracies have experienced elements of authoritarian
leadership, including nepotism, limits on freedom of speech or of the
press, overtly discriminatory policies, and the abuse of public office
for personal gain. But the United States has mostly avoided these traps,
owing largely to term limits and a reliable system of checks and
balances.
Enter Trump. Upon
assuming a powerful position, no effective leader – in government,
business, or anywhere else – publicly excoriates future staff; lashes
out in response to any and all criticism; disparages highly regarded
public figures; or refuses to learn about the issues he or she will have
to address. Trump has done all of this and more.
Trump’s transition
team sent surveys to the US Department of Energy, seeking the names of
employees who have worked on climate-change policy. He has offered a key
White House role to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. And he has
consistently refused intelligence briefings, dismissed the concerns of
the intelligence community about Russian meddling in the election, and
even likened the release of information about those concerns to Nazi Germany.
Of course, Trump’s distrust of experts is far from unique
nowadays. But using experts’ missteps or uncertainties to justify
disregarding facts is irresponsible. For the US president – a person
tasked with serving and protecting people all over the world – it’s
downright dangerous.
The danger is all the more acute when the president is taking advantage of skepticism about facts to manipulate perceptions
and create space for his own unethical behavior. Trump has claimed that
he will disentangle himself from his business to avoid conflicts of
interests, while offering no credible plan for doing so.
Trump’s team has been
consistent about little except its insistence on the notion that being
powerful is equivalent to being right. When asked about Trump’s
behavior, Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager and now a White
House counselor, replied, “He’s the president-elect, so that’s presidential behavior.” Trump himself has responded to questions about his campaign rhetoric with a simple “I won.”
Congressional
Republicans seem to be on board with this demagogic approach. The
party’s caucus in the House of Representatives made it their order of
business to try to gut an independent ethics committee
established in the wake of scandals a decade ago. The backlash was
swift, and they had to back off. But they may yet try again: Trump
criticized the move, but only its timing, and called the ethics
committee “unfair.”
The attack on ethics
does not end there. Senate Republicans have pushed forward confirmation
hearings for Trump’s cabinet picks, even though proper vetting and financial disclosures have not yet taken place.
Efforts have been
made to counter – or, at least, highlight – the ethics violations that
Trump and his team are accumulating. Walter Shaub, Director of the
independent Office of Government Ethics, which was established after
Watergate, spoke out on the subject. (Trump’s chief of staff responded with a veiled threat, warning the director to “be careful.”) The Washington Post
has created a new team devoted specifically to covering conflicts of
interest within the Trump administration and possible violations of the
Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution, which prohibits anyone holding
public office from accepting money or gifts from foreign officials.
But, for now, Trump
and his enablers seem committed to continuing down their current path –
an approach that is already weakening America’s moral authority. While
many world leaders are concerned about Trump’s behavior, many others are
probably thinking that they now have tacit permission to do likewise.
Business leaders, too, may conclude that they can flout ethical rules.
This logic, while
understandable, is flawed. Trump won’t be US president forever.
Right-wing populist movements like his will eventually tear themselves
apart, not least because their leaders are not committed to policies
that will actually help their constituents. On the contrary, Trump and
congressional Republicans are moving fast to dismantle the Affordable
Care Act – President Barack Obama’s signature health-care policy –
claiming that its as-yet-undefined replacement will maintain the popular
elements and drop the unpopular ones. In reality, this will be
impossible.
Those who take
advantage of the current ethical fugue for personal or shareholder gain
will have to answer for it when the political pendulum swings back to
sanity. So will those who, while not jumping aboard the venality train
themselves, hold the doors open for others, by failing to defend ethical
standards.
Politicians and
businesspeople must now decide whether they will be known as
opportunists and enablers or as true leaders, adhering to the ethics and
principles that they have publicly espoused. The World Economic Forum
Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which focused on “responsible and
responsive leadership,” presented an early opportunity to draw a line in
the sand. In the future, those who remained on the right side of it
will be glad they did.
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