The Staff Ate My Homework

By Roger Rosenblatt

It is always heartening to see an art revived, especially when you have forgotten how much pleasure it affords. The art of buck passing, for instance. It popped to life in New York a couple of weeks ago when Bruce Caputo, a candidate for the U.S. Senate, was caught as having described himself as a Viet Nam-era draftee and Army lieutenant. Mr. Caputo was neither. Yet when confronted with the fact that he had falsified his credentials in Who's Who in American Politics, he rose to the occasion as Michelangelo once rose to the ceiling: "To the extent that I or somebody on my staff was less than careful, we made a mistake." Thus in a single sentence he was able to identify the lie as carelessness and to imply that if anyone at all was responsible (a question he opens), it was probably an underling. Mr. Caputo is small potatoes, but his comment is buck passing at a very high level. When you see a performance like his, you see how intricate the art can get.

Nor are other forms of self-exoneration to be confused with it, though they be equally impressive. The "psychological mishap" is quite popular; when David Begelman, the former head of Columbia Pictures, was asked why he stole $60,000 from his company, he cited "neurotic displays of self-destructiveness." Political necessity is a good excuse as well--the Soviets, for example, explaining their invasion of Afghanistan as a gesture to save Afghanistan. Then there is the "I don't recall," a sort of buck pass to one's memory. Blaming the state is a standby too, as are blaming modernity, one's mother, the computer and the post office. "The dog ate my homework" is a favorite with schoolchildren. And a new plane of inventiveness was reached recently when a Virginia man killed his mother-in-law in the garage with a hatchet and explained that he mistook her for a raccoon.

Fine excuses all, but not passes of the buck. A true buck pass means not only that one shirks responsibility, but lays the blame on another person, preferably an innocent.

This is why buck passing among equals is a lesser form of the art. After Pearl Harbor, Admiral Kimmel, commander of the U.S. Fleet, and Major General Short, commander of the Army's Hawaiian department, had a field day blaming each other and Washington for unpreparedness, but since all were culpable, there was no real art in the show. The same fandango is going on in Spain these days, with the generals on trial for treason frantic to pin last year's failed coup on each other. The buck may also be passed to superiors, as Nuremburg made clear. The first buck pass was Adam to Eve to snake, who, while superior to the unhappy couple, was unable to pass the buck elsewhere. Since the snake himself once worked for a Superior, it is just as well that he had no finger to point.

But the highest form of the art occurs when the blame can be laid at the door of someone either too helpless to fight back or too loyal to consider it. Such a practice goes back to Henry II, who, after clearly indicating that he sought the execution of Thomas Becket, claimed that his knights had misinterpreted his wishes. The modern master is Richard Nixon. On simple matters, like tax evasion, Nixon could merely be brilliant: "I was confident that the members of my staff and my lawyers, to whom I had delegated the responsibility for preparing my tax return ..." Yet there were times when he could only compete with himself.

During an interview with David Frost, he at last offered the public his own special explanation of Watergate:

"I'm convinced that if it hadn't been for Martha [Mitchell], and God rest her soul, because she, in her heart, was a good person. She just had a mental and emotional problem that nobody knew about. If it hadn't been for Martha, there'd have been no Watergate, because John wasn't minding that store. He was letting Magruder and all these kids, these nuts, run this thing. Now, am I saying here, at this juncture, that Watergate should be blamed on Martha Mitchell? Of course not. I'm trying to explain my feeling of compassion for my friend, John Mitchell."

One simply cannot do better than that.

What, then, does the art require? First, it is necessary to do something wrong, something both so sneaky and so stupid that it can be easily detected. Second, when the detection occurs, appear bewildered as to how the incident could ever have happened. Grope dazedly through your initial explanation, creating the impression of someone who has just been dropped on his head from a great height. Use abstract language. Then, fall into a silence. That way you will appear to have suddenly realized the identity of the guilty person whom, naturally, you will do your utmost to shield.

Next, choose with meticulous care the one to whom you will pass the buck. The "staff' is always safest because nobody knows exactly what a staff is, except that it can be either "splendid" or "incompetent." If you choose an individual, however, he must be so persuaded of your virtue that he is prepared to believe that he actually did what you suggest. Rose Mary Woods nearly sprained her entire body in trying to demonstrate how she could have erased the Nixon tapes while reaching for the phone. (Incidentally, when asked what he thought had happened to the tapes, Alexander Haig passed the buck to "some sinister force," thus adding a supernatural element to the case, if nothing to the subject.)

When speaking of your buck passee, use descriptions such as "poor old" and "overworked" so that you come off as injured and all seeing. And most important: always take part of the blame yourself. It will show that you grasp the basic lesson of good administration--that the top man is responsible for everything--while at the same time denying that the lesson applies in your particular instance. Thus you both tell the truth and defile it.

Finally and fundamentally, you must be the kind of person capable of passing the buck in the first place. This is an art, after all. For Harry Truman, the buck stopped somewhere. For the true buck passer it never stops, but is constantly being turned over in his fingers, heads and tails, waiting for the moment of accusation when it may be gracefully flipped to a patsy. When a run-of-the-mill culprit says, "I did it because I was overtired," he implies that he is essentially a better person than his particular action indicates. But by adding the punishment of others to a mess of one's own making, the buck passer reveals that he is actually worse than his actions. Such people are rare, which may be why society reserves special positions for them: generals, senators, presidents and kings. --By Roger Rosenblatt

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