Learning the No Comment Rule

We can all applaud the commitments of the Obama Administration for greater transparancy and improved openness in communication with the public. However, this week, it was apparant that these commitments and practices have limits and that this administration needs to learn the "no comment rules." Of course, rule #1 is when lawyers tell you, for real, that you cannot make any comment because of possible legal jeopardy or interference with a legal process. But there are also other times when "no comment" or it's equivalent is the best response for the administratin and for the country.

One rule would be that "no comment" or its equivalent is the best response when any other response runs the risk of gratutiously damaging the national interest, creating a problem that did not exist before, exacerbating a problem that already does exist or that serves to take the nation's eyes off the agenda that the administration wishes to emphasize.

There are ample examples of violations of this rule from the Obama administration just in this last week, beginning with the President's initial remarks in regard to the arrest of Harvard Professor Gates. Then we have Vice President Joe Biden making remarks in Georgia that did not pleast Russia and then remarks in an interview with the Wall Street Journal upon his return from Georgia which strained botht the relation with Georgia and Russia. To add to the mix, Hilary Clinton characterized the attempt of Honduran President Zelaya to return to his country after being deposed by the army as "reckless."

None of the remarks mentioned above were necessary, helpful or enlighening. All of them served to exacerbate exiting problems, create new ones and take the nation's eyes off the agenda that the administration wishes to emphasize.

The "equivalent" of a "no comment" was demonstrated to perfection, on the other hand, by the administration's nomination to the Supreme Court, Judge Sonya Sotomayor. There are numerous variations of themes which allow a person to give essentially a "no commnet" without saying those words. In Sotomayor's case it varied from saying the question raised a "hypothetical", to the fact that she might have to rule on a similar case involved in the question, or that she didn't have enough information about the state law that would apply...and on and on and on.

The "equivalents" of "no comment" need to be practiced and held always just a tip of the tongue away so that they can be quickly spit out even though one's mind is formulating what one really would want to say if they were not a member of the President's cabinet or staff.

It is still early in the Obama Adminstration and I am confident that the President himself, the Secretary of State and the Vice President will learn that in a week where the President was trying to keep himself and the nationa and the Congress focused on the dire need of the nation for a national health care plan it is not good to blow up incidents beyond proportion, needlesssly antagonize friends, increase the number of phone calls the President needs to make to repair damages or, in pursuit of building up democracy, to change the paradigm of "reckless" to apply to a harmless political stunt instead of a military coup.

Personally, I would be pleased to become the White House Consultant on when to invoke the "no comment" rule including training for all staff on the various acceptable forms of the "no comment equivalent." If the position is not contemplated, perhaps stimulus money could be found to crate just one more job.

Human Rights Hypocrisy

The annual US State Department Report on Human Rights has just been made public. It is too early to know if this, like many previous reports is tainted by ideological or national security concerns, criticizing those who are our political enemies and going light over the faults of those who are our friends and allies. In one sense, it coes not matter. The question of truthfulness is certainly not determined by US State Department dictamens. There are many good, honest independent groups who can do this. The question if "credibility." And it is on that point that that the US reports is, has always been and will continue to be in the category of "hypocritical", not "credible."

The Washington Times report on the State Department findings wants to use it as a way to criticize Hillary Clinton's recent statements in China about human rights not interfering with other developing agendas. So the Times quotes an Amnesty International source to make their point: "The United States is one of the only countries that can meaningfully stand up to China on human rights issues," said T. Kumar, Amnesty International's advocacy director for Asia and the Pacific. "But by commenting that human rights will not interfere with other priorities, Secretary Clinton damages future U.S. initiatives to protect those rights in China."

I am not sure what role T. Kumas plays with Amnesty International, assuming the Times correctly quotes and identifies him, but his statement does his organization no good service by tying its credibility to the credibility of the US.

Clinton, by the way, maintains that human rights is very important to her personally and to the US State Department under her leadership.

The guy from Amnesty is wrong. What meaningful and credible stand can a country like the US which has not even signed many of the most crucial and significant UN Human Rights treaties make to any country in the world? I will not even mention that many independent human rights groups are currently making assessments of who in the previous US government to bring to international courts on charges of violations of human rights and even crimes against humanity. Then add Guantanamo. But, really, even before the Bush administration decided that the only human right that mattered was their right to do unto others before they do unto us, the credibility of the US has always been in question because of its lack of commitment to basic human rights witnessed by the lack of its signature on many of the treaties. this may also explain why the report of the US State Department has always been more reflective of political concerns rather than objective monitoring and evaluation based on human rights criteria.

I guess I am old fashioned or out of tune with reality, but I had the impression that first you had to demonstrate your commitment to human rights (by signing basic traties accepted by considerable number of other states in the world) and, then, demonstrate that you actually respect them before you go around pronoucing on how others respect human rights.

I am confident that human rights violations are growing in China (many credible sources have documented this fact). I am not confident at all that whatever the US State Department says about Human Rights has much more reach in the world other than that, in times of economic trouble, it creates and supports some number of jobs in order to create the report.

If Clinton and the Washington Times (sic) are really concerned about human rights they can begin by joining together in a campaign to get the Congress to sign, let's see, there are so many, but lets begin with the UN Treaty of the Rights of The Child (President Clinton signed it but the Congress did not ratify). That would be a first step back toward credibility.