In “Over-Ruled” in tomorrow’s Washington Post, David Brown observes that in a crisis, too many people fail to do the sensible thing because they’re afraid of being criticized. Instead, they limit themselves to doing the “safe” thing by following rules and procedures.
IMHO, Brown nails it. Here’s an excerpt (with emphasis added):
The other reason many Americans in authority hesitate to make risky decisions is the fear of criticism and even public humiliation — at the hands of the news media, late-night comedians, and now the nonstop cacophony of the blogosphere.
Many members of my profession make a living, pay mortgages and send children to college in part by telling people how they could have done things better. We make a point about conflicts of interest, whether real or merely perceived, and whether or not they would make any difference. We get on the case of people who do too much, and we get on the case of people who do too little. We are obsessed with motive, and in general assume self-dealing, questionable competence or bad faith among public servants. Except in the rare case where action is immediately deemed heroic and subjected to little criticism — the behavior of fire and law enforcement officials on Sept. 11, 2001, is a notable example — there are few functions of government that, in their minds at least, reporters, editorial writers and columnists couldn’t do better. Not to mention Jon Stewart.
While this critic-and-second-guesser role is an important part of journalism, in practice there’s too much of it, and it comes at a price. The price is that people have become afraid to do things that fall outside their job description without explicit permission and implied forgiveness for possible bad outcomes.
The Advocate newspaper of Baton Rouge carried a story about an orthopedic surgeon from Pennsylvania who had come to Louisiana to help evacuees. As he was trying to resuscitate a patient at a makeshift clinic, a Coast Guardsman ordered him to stop doing chest compressions because he had not yet registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and therefore had not been approved to deliver care.
This is an extreme example of rule-following — which is why it got on the front page of the newspaper. There are other, far more serious examples.
One of them was the behavior of the 769th and 527th engineering battalions of the Louisiana National Guard, which were housed at the Convention Center when that building became an island of deprivation, chaos and lawlessness.
The 350 armed soldiers knew enough about what was going on to barricade their part of the building against the mob, and to come and go from a side door so as few people as possible would know of their presence. Later, they said no one had told them to restore order in the convention center. That’s bad enough (and I know this is the know-it-all reporter talking). What’s worse is that they didn’t do it without being asked. * * *
Everyone coloring inside the lines — it’s a great system until the wind starts blowing really, really hard.
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