Letting Bad Enough Alone

By Roger Rosenblatt

The art of letting well enough alone merely requires foresight, but the art of letting bad enough alone demands clairvoyance. That makes it a rare art indeed, and therefore William Agee may be forgiven for not having mastered it. At least he had not mastered it by the afternoon of Sept. 24. In a fit of candor, he faced 600 employees of the Bendix Corp., of which he is chairman, and tried to put to rest once and for all the rumors that his admittedly "close friendship" with attractive, blond Mary Cunningham, 29, had anything to do with her rise from executive assistant to vice president for planning in the stunningly short span of 15 months. In the process, of course, he resuscitated some remarkably anachronistic ideas about women in business. Having thus cleared the air, Agee then settled back to observe the American business community set aside its minor woes (a plunging stock market, a Middle East war) to concentrate in rapt fascination on the matter of Agee and Cunningham. Does he wonder where it all went wrong?

Probably not any more. After Agee's clarifying exercise, his company issued a statement that a "major disclosure" would be forthcoming the next day, but then "upon further reflection," Agee decided that "we just didn't have any more to say." That was boyish optimism; there have been several additional announcements from the company since, the sum effect of which has been to hoist the lucky couple out of the business world toward the shrines of American folklore. It was also boyish optimism that inspired Agee to make his clarifying gesture in the first place. A realist will always let bad enough alone, but a romantic cannot help himself. And to be fair, how was Agee to know that by making a clean breast of things, which is supposed to be good for the soul as well as part of the American way, he would be snatching disaster from the jaws of suspicion?

Of course, he could have looked more closely into history before he leaped. In fact, Agee's suicidal forthrightness places him squarely in a most distinguished company of reckless clarifiers, all of whom at one crucial, wretched moment of their lives were possessed by the demonic idea that if they would only explain themselves fully in the midst of seeming scandal or time of harassment--let it all hang out, lay their cards on the table, spare no detail, be up front, come clean--and so forth --then the grateful, enlightened public would murmur "I see," and all would be swell.

So George F. Baer achieved American duncehood during the Pennsylvania coal strike of 1902, when a resident of Wilkes-Barre wrote to him, as chief spokesman for the mine owners, to express anxiety at the ravages of the strike. Baer decided to explain himself. In a letter that was later widely circulated, especially among the United Mine Workers, he reassured his correspondent that some people were placed on earth to manage and others to serve, and that was the divine order of things. Said Baer: "The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for, not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given control of the property interests of the country." So that was that.

Then there was William Jennings Bryan who, having seen his fundamentalist creed vindicated during the Scopes trial of 1925, still insisted upon taking the stand in order to make his antievolution position crystal clear, thereby exposing himself to national (and historical) ridicule. And there was Oveta Culp Hobby who, as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in 1955, explained the shortage of the new Salk polio vaccine: "No one could have foreseen its great acclaim." And there is always Richard Nixon, the apostle of perfect clarity, who at times has seemed hell-bent on clarifying himself out of existence.

The lesson in all such instances, as the wise have always told us, is the abiding value of silence. La Rochefoucauld, for example, got down to his usual brass tacks by calling silence "the best tactic for him who distrusts himself." It is not simply that silence is generally prudent; it also encourages the presumption of virtue, appearing--especially in times of adversity--as a sign of both discretion and suffering. How unlikely (goes the public reasoning) that a guilty party would endure calumnies without a peep.

But the best reasons for keeping one's counsel during a scandal (real or apparent) are purely practical:

1) Nobody ever wants to be reminded that he has engaged in gossip. When the object of that gossip steps forward to remind the rumormonger of such a thing, that person becomes an enemy. As long as rumor remains fuzzy, it can be almost wistful. But when confronted openly, the rumormonger suddenly feels that he must truly believe what he has merely been fantasizing. Zealot is pitted against zealot. Carnage ensues.

2) Every time someone makes a public confession, his audience grows conscious of their own secret sins. The mere presence of the confessor is mortifying, implicitly incriminating. The audience cannot take it. The more direct his approach, the more they want to get rid of him. Carnage ensues.

3) Finally, nobody ever really wants a scandal cleared up. Uncleared-up, a scandal is like radio: it allows the imagination to rove like a child in a flower field, especially when an office romance is involved, and the imagination may cavort among infinite possibilities of after-hour adventures behind the desk--legs sprawled wildly among the Eberhard Fabers; Muzak stuck on Bolero. When the candid spoilsport steps forward to tell it like it actually was, the imagination's freedom is curtailed. The audience grows vengeful. Carnage ensues.

This said, there still is something remarkably touching about those who do not let bad enough alone, perhaps because their errors are errors of the heart. Who but a genuine innocent--in outlook, if not in conduct--would be so bold or dumb as to put his life on the line like that? Not a Frenchman, certainly, who would regard a scandal as droll; nor an Englishman, to be sure, who would regard it as an honor. No, only an American would blunder forth as in the Agee case, openly advocating fair play, the merit system, and the rights of privacy within the same declaration. Only an American would be so impatient as to prevent rumors from dying out on their own. It must be said too that only a male chauvinist American could make such a botch of chivalry.

Yet perhaps the most characteristic American element in all this, and the most moving as well, is that astonished moment when the reckless clarifier carefully looks over his audience (or courtroom or stationery or press conference) anc envisions being born again. O hopeful pioneer. All he has to do is say a few words and the world will be new. He feels better already. --By Roger Rosenblatt

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