Former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland recently recently delivered a Headliner lecture to the John Locke Foundation on the topic “The Arrogance of Power.” He also discussed the topic with Carolina Journal associate editor Mitch Kokai. (Go to http://carolinajournal.com/cjradio/ to find a station near you or to learn about the weekly CJ Radio podcast.)
Kokai: It’s been been hard to find a North Carolina newspaper in recent months with no stories about ethics scandals in state government. And that’s one reason our next guest offers an interesting perspective. Why is the arrogance of power an important topic to discuss?
Rowland: Well, I think a lot of people are wondering why there’s any scandals in not only in the political world but also in the corporate world. And I’ve had 25 years experience in government. And of course several years ago I had to resign and ended up going to a prison camp for issues that were related to public conduct. And so what I’ve done is I’m working on a book that I call Falling Into Grace. And in the book what I describe are kind of three basic stages of life — my life, your life, everybody’s life. The first stage is what I call the rise to power, our interests in pursuing a career or accumulating power. And the second stage is something we’d like to avoid, and I call it the arrogance of power. And if you look at what’s happened in political circles, corporate circles, local school boards — when there’s a problem, when someone has a conflict of interest or an ethical lapse or criminal misconduct, usually it’s related to the arrogance of power, in my opinion. And what I mean by that is that the power has been accumulated, you’ve got this attitude of “I’m better than everybody else,” a sense of entitlement takes place — “I deserve this.” And so they begin to rationalize and justify various actions that take place. “Well, I’m in public service. I don’t work for a lot of money.” “Time away from my kids.” The list goes on and on and on. And the other part of it is something that we say in the political circles, and that is that you start to believe your own press releases. So this sense of entitlement and arrogance takes place, and from that it becomes a culture. The people around you adopt this sense of entitlement and this sense of arrogance. And then misdeeds and inappropriate acts begin to take place. The other sidebar of it is what I call conscious avoidance. And that happens more so in the public side, the private side, I should say, with regard to businesses. And that’s when, you know, you see a certain business that has huge increases in sales and they’ve done well with their stock and so forth — whether it’s Enron or some of these other companies, Worldcom and others — and what happens is that you know that Joe and Sam and Mary are probably going over the edge in terms of their sales or their marketing or some other conduct is taking place. But conscious avoidance says, “Well, you know what? I like the results! We had a 30 percent increase last quarter.”
Kokai: The ends justify the means.
Rowland: The ends justify the means, you’re absolutely right. And so what happens is, as a manager, as a leader, as a corporate CEO you kind of look the other way and you say, “Well, you know what? No one will know.” And again, just like the smaller issues, it builds up. And over a short period of time the arrogance of power — the sense of entitlement — takes place, and before you know it a small issue of sending a food basket to somebody becomes, you know, supplying a car and paying for someone’s college tuition. So these are just some of the reasons, I believe, that these cultures develop in the political world as well as the business world.
Kokai: And you mention that there is a third stage?
Rowland: The third part is what I call the real power. And when I lecture, talk to, speak with, especially young people, I talk about how to avoid the arrogance of power. So the real point is, “Hey, that’s great, Gov. Rowland. You told us about the arrogance of power and how this happens. How do you avoid it?” And the answer is, the real power. And the real power is that you have to have a tether. You have to have a moral compass. You have to have a little voice in your head that says, “Don’t do this. Don’t consciously avoid that issue. Show good leadership. Don’t allow entitlement to take place.” We all like to believe that it’s our spouses, or perhaps it’s our boss or our coaches — I talk to a lot of young groups — but it’s really not. You have to have a spiritual tether, a spiritual grounding that basically instills in you the importance of doing the right thing. You know, it’s the old story, “Just do the right thing!” I mean why do some people go over the line and others don’t? Is it their upbringing? Is it their religion? Is it their home background? And I think unless you have a spiritual aspect you’re going to kind of spin off and get into the arrogance of power. So I talk about the third part because — twofold — one is that’s how you avoid that sense of entitlement, that arrogance. That’s how you avoid treating people shabbily. When I talk to the young athletes, I always say, “You know, it’s like the kid on the team who becomes the great athlete and all of a sudden he stops talking to everybody and becomes arrogant.” And you even see that at very early, early ages. So the real power is what you find, hopefully, before the arrogance of power takes place. And generally it takes place when you have a life-changing, life-altering experience — the loss of a loved one. In my case, falling off the pedestal of being the highest public official in the state to being a prisoner in a prison. One of the things that I compare it to, to show the roller coaster of life, is that literally overnight I was a guest in the Lincoln bedroom, and then literally moments later I was standing in line for toilet paper in a prison camp. So life really deals you some interesting ups and downs.
Kokai: You served as the governor of Connecticut as a Republican. Folks who have been following scandals on the national, federal, level know that the Republicans have run things. In this state it’s the Democrats who run the General Assembly who have had the lion’s share of the scandals. Based on your experience and the work that you’ve done, does this have anything to do with the political parties, or does it have more to do with whoever it is that has the power?
Rowland: Whoever it is that has the power. The arrogance of power is clearly attributed to the party that’s been in power too long. And that’s why we generally switch back and forth over the years. In Washington, Tom DeLay and all those issues, it all happened to deal with Republicans. So I think what happens is that the party in power develops that arrogance, that sense of entitlement, and all the bad things begin to happen. Now, not to say that there will be instances where the other party, whether it be Republican or Democrat, will have ethical issues or criminal issues. But for the most part, and it’s just my unscientific, humble opinion that, once that entitlement arrogance mentality takes hold, whether it’s in government or in business, then the problems occur. In my case, I was in for three terms. I was in for over 10 years. And people around me became arrogant. They became, you know, flagrant in their abuse of power, my responsibility. And so problems began.
Kokai: Someone is going to have to have power, whether it’s the Democrats or the Republicans or some third party some day. Is there anything that we can do within the system, within our structures, that helps limit the impact of this arrogance that can develop?
Rowland: Well, that’s a good question. People will talk about reform and reporting and disclosures. I think that the truth is big problems emerge, which always start as small problems. Really it’s up to the press. It’s their responsibility, as sad as it is for me to say, for me to say that, but it’s true. It’s the press’ responsibility to keep everybody’s feet to the fire. In the old days, you know, they always say the press and the politicians would hang out in the local pubs together, in the local bars. Everybody knew what was going on. So the tolerance has to be reduced, and the division of relationships has to take place. When I say the small issues become the big issues, you know, when you see that so-and-so has got the daughter and the son on the payroll and the contractor is taking advantage of this and the contractor takes advantage of that, nine times out of 10, what starts with the fruit basket becomes paying for the college tuition for the senator’s son. So you have to draw some lines and avoid what I call the major conflicts of interest. That’s generally what drives most of the problems. When people are in public service they’ve got to realize that they’re not going to make money. By definition being in public service, you are not going to make money. You’re not in the private sector. There’s no commission. And you have to buy into all of that, and you have to accept that and agree to that. Once you think you can use your position to enrich yourself, it’s over. The problems begin and end. But it’s really the press that has to do it.