From the fifth rung of the ladder, I
surveyed the scene, and the conclusion was unavoidable: I’d
been screwing up for years. This winter marked a full decade since
I bought a small orchard on the north coast of California, but the
trees weren’t in top condition any more.
With my
two riverside acres came the annual chore of winter pruning to keep
the orchard healthy and productive. In trimming the trees, I must
balance my hunger for Fujis and Granny Smiths against the limited
strength of the wood that supports the fruit. After last
autumn’s harvest, dozens of limbs lay splintered on the
ground, and I realized I might have gotten too greedy.
My
inspection confirmed this opinion. Every one of those broken
branches was a limb I should have cut off some previous winter — a
limb that proved too weak when laden with juicy apples. Ten years
into my administration, I had to admit to myself that the flawed
shape of the trees was no one’s responsibility but my own.
So I unsheathed my saw and lopped off branch after branch
that I never should have spared in the first place. It felt as
freeing as a fresh haircut. By the time I finished, the trees
looked sturdier and more sprightly. I’d shifted the balance
from short-term fruit to long-term bounty. Although I felt some
pangs of sheepishness when I acknowledged my mistake, it was
ultimately a relief to correct it.
What’s more, it
was in my interest to do so. When the world around us provides
explicit feedback, we ignore it at our peril. In the valley where I
live, the world sends messages like these: This road needs more
rock if you want to drive it in the winter. Clear the brush around
your house, or it’ll burn up in the next, inevitable
wildfire. We must heed these signals, admit any errors, and steer a
new course.
Unfortunately, most public figures these days
seem to lack the willingness to ‘fess up. Surely they
don’t believe we are blind to their blunders. Recently,
National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice dodged and feinted before
the Sept. 9/11 commission, evading any admission that she and the
Bush team had failed to prevent the hijackers’ attacks. It
was a disappointing performance. It happened on her watch, after
all, and the least she could do was acknowledge that bin Laden had
outsmarted her.
Rice is not alone in refusing to own her
errors. Democratic Sen. John Kerry ought to admit — as he declined
to do in a Wisconsin candidates’ debate — that he shares
some fraction of the responsibility for the Iraq mess because he
voted to let President Bush go to war. He could go farther, and
explain that he was fooled by the inaccurate intelligence claims
trotted out by the Bush administration. He’d be in good
company, in the same boat as most Americans.
This
prescription doesn’t apply exclusively to politicians.
I’m sure Martha Stewart would be happier if she’d
acknowledged up front that it was no coincidence she sold her
Imclone stock at such an opportune time. It wasn’t the deed;
it was the dissembling that tripped her up.
For his part,
President Bush could start by conceding that he showed poor taste
when he used images of the World Trade Center in his recent
television ads. That might warm him up for some of the larger
admissions that ought to be on his plate. Just say it: “We were
wrong, there were no stockpliles of biological weapons, of poison
gas, of nuclear bomb materials. We didn’t anticipate the
imminent threat from al Qaeda.”
Unlike the Roman Catholic
Church, America doesn’t invest its top leader with a doctrine
of infallibility. The man at the head of our lineage, George
Washington, is celebrated for admitting to an inconvenient truth
about a cherry tree. Somehow, though, accepting responsibility has
fallen out of fashion. Those who exhibit it, such as former
terrorism adviser Richard Clarke, stand that much taller because
they are so rare.
Next to the Bushes and Stewarts of the
world, I admit I have it easy. Only my close neighbors notice when
my orchard is full of shattered branches. But I’m discovering
the pleasure of admitting my mistakes. I draw my saw, and whack off
another branch that doesn’t belong. Maybe this time,
I’ll get it right.
Seth Zuckerman is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News
in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). He freelances from Petrolia,
California.
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