ROBERT MCFARLANE ON DESPAIR AND THE PUBLIC GOOD

By ROBERT MCFARLANE

Nine years ago, in the aftermath of my own failed suicide, the most astonishing yet reassuring revelation was the number of Senators, Representatives and other high-level officials who came to the hospital and confided to me their own failed efforts to do the same thing at moments when the burdens of their office or the severity of public criticism became too great to bear. We will never really know what drove Admiral Mike Boorda to suicide; I believe it was the convergence of two factors: the medical disorder of depression and an extraordinary sense of honor. Severe clinical depression is a fairly common occurrence in Washington. As tragic as is the loss of Admiral Boorda--a man of proven courage and high moral precept--it will be compounded if we don't think hard about how to lower the likelihood of more such calamities.

The pathology of depression is deceptively simple. The containment of severe stress--the bottling up of one's problems without communicating them to others--contributes to a chemical imbalance that impairs one's ability to function normally and induces a feeling of despair and hopelessness. If unrelieved by talk, therapy or medical treatment, the chemical imbalance induces a spiral of decline, which leads ultimately to utter paralysis and self-destruction. Admiral Boorda may have been particularly susceptible. Throughout his adult life--more than 30 years of challenge in peace and war--his ethic toward problem solving was that of the solitary commander: solve the problem, don't evidence doubt, don't seek help.

Another factor that may have contributed to Admiral Boorda's sacrifice was his misguided sense of obligation to atone with his life for the embarrassment he believed he had brought on the Navy, his institution, his anchor, his family. Mike Boorda, like most of the senior officers I have known in our military services, would have felt himself the steward of his service's honor and concluded that his sacrifice would uphold it. For a man to have placed a higher importance on upholding an unreachable standard of accountability than on his own survival expresses an ethic that, however misguided, ought to be respected.

Journalists are central to our ability to establish and maintain a high standard of ethical behavior in public officials. But they bear an acute responsibility in making judgments about fairness, including judgments about the extent to which lapses by public officials deserve exposure. In this case, Admiral Boorda's conduct--in particular his correction of a mistake that was not characteristic during his 30-year career--seems to me not to have warranted the scrutiny it received a year later.

The pressures journalists face in making these judgments are severe. In recent years, for whatever reasons--commercial pressure, or simply haste--the standard has been lowered. And the cost is immeasurable. The reluctance of the most qualified candidates to enter public life and the widespread indifference among the next generation toward government service are the most obvious.