Chasing the buck.

NEW YORK, MARCH 6

HARRY TRUMAN is forever remembered for having said, "The buck stops here!" This came at a high moment in confusion and recriminations during the postwar federal scandals. It isn't by any means established that President Truman bungled his responsibilities as chief executive. What he said merely reflected his time in the Army, in which there is cognitive training on responsibility based on the chain of command.

This chain is unbending, and it is, for exactly that reason, implausible. It is one thing to draw an absolutely straight line from the lowest private to the Army commander. Anyone with a handbook describing promotions can do it. If today's exercise is to plot successive promotions until you reach four-star general, why go ahead. Junior can do it without thinking. In fact, not thinking will help.

Where complications enter in is with the commander in chief, who is not in the military line of promotion, but who has authority over the armed forces. Now, the complexity of command does not shield the commander in chief from formal responsibility. If the head of Walter Reed Hospital has done a lousy job, whom do you complain to, if not the secretary of the Army, who reports in turn to the president? But remember that this is a disciplinary question. The tougher question is: Whom and what do you blame?

Millions of Americans exercise responsibilities at various levels. At home, to begin with. On the job, of course. When businessmen and businesswomen are successful, their talents are sought by organizations ranging from the local branch of the Boy Scouts up to AT&T. When an organization appoints directors, the objective is to diffuse, not to concentrate, responsibility. The theory is that good management will result when responsibility is shared.

Of course the point arrives where it can't be shared, even as the moment comes for the soldier to shoot or not to shoot.

But the eagerness to blame President Bush for the mess at Walter Reed tells us that what we are engaged in is not a healthy exercise in management. It tells us that in search of an object of political contumely, we permit ourselves to be guided by Truman's silly aphorism: The buck stops here.

The beginning of knowledge about democratic organization is that confusions will happen, and policies will be followed that superior officers did not order and are affronted by. Bush took the blame for Abu Ghraib, but who believes that he desired torture and obscene handling of the enemy? Democratic accounting permits those who disapprove of the policies being followed to single out someone in authority, resulting, e.g., in the firing of the two principal officers involved in Walter Reed and the demand for the resignation of the secretary of the Army.

Perhaps the voter is permitted to start in counting: a delinquency in January, another in February, another in March--and by the time November comes, you may be convinced that the commander in chief does not set the proper standards. It is then but only then that you resort to Trumanesque reductionisms: The soldier's shoes aren't shined; send the buck to the White House.

We have to watch for this kind of thing, especially in this season of high criticism aimed at President Bush. The majority of the American people regret that we are in Iraq. But it is not safe to say that the majority of the American people wish we could vaporize our presence in Iraq. Only Bush can, so to speak, liquidate our Iraq exposure. He is not going to do this, and we settle for heightening the criticism whenever there is sour news from Iraq, which is every day, or sour news about the administration of corollary responsibilities, like looking after our wounded.

A not-bad rule would be to repeat every day, "The buck stops with delinquent human nature." We correctly refuse to believe that Americans would intentionally fail to provide for our wounded. But our wounded were not being provided for, people are being fired and replaced, the houses of Congress are being asked for more money, and do we really need to bring in a penalty point on George Bush to feel that we've done what needed doing?--UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE