Florida Governor Jeb Bush

Based on the unavoidable conclusion that not being ethically smart enough to avoid engaging in high-profile conduct that is sure to strike a majority of Americans as small, nasty, and an abuse of power because it IS small, nasty, and an abuse of power, Jeb Bush just grabbed Ethics Dunce laurels for June.

Good heavens! What form of logic could possibly be circulating around the Presidential Brother's brain that would prompt it to suggest,

"Hey! Now that his wife's autopsy has shown that Michael Schiavo wasn't preventing a disabled person from receiving helpful rehabilitation, didn't abuse or strangle her, and didn't misrepresent her medical condition to the courts, thus making all your past inappropriate innuendo to the contrary cause for a big-time apology and at least a fruit basket, since it would probably be too flashy to give the guy a Lexus, why don't you have the guy investigated instead…you know, to see if he can be criminally charged for not calling 911 soon enough when Terri collapsed 15 years ago!" 

Is Jeb Bush using Homer Simpson's brain? No, that can't be it…Homer's brain would reject such idiocy.

Bush claims to be suddenly intrigued by the fact that Michael Schiavo testified in a 1992 medical malpractice trial that he found his wife collapsed at 5 a.m. on Feb. 25, 1990, and later said on a television interview in 2003 that he found her about 4:30 a.m. He called 911 at 5:40 a.m. "In light of this new information, I urge you to take a fresh look at this case without any preconceptions as to the outcome," the Governor wrote to State Attorney Bernie McCabe.

What new information…the information that Bush and others who thrusted themselves into the Schiavo family dispute had been 100% off base in their slander of Michael Schiavo? The information that Michael Schiavo made Jeb and his legions look like intermeddling fools by having the courage to stick to his principles in the face of relentless attacks by elected officials?

No, that can't be it: that's not new. Then again, neither is the information about the time gap between when Terri collapsed and when Michael called 911. Why didn't Jeb sic an investigator on Schiavo years ago, if this is so appropriate now?

There is a time when reasonable and ethical human beings should be able to let anger, personal humiliation and defeat go, empathize with the adversaries whose actions have caused them pain and who have been caused pain in return, and let them get on with their lives. Thanks substantially to Bush, Michael Schiavo had to fight both his state and national governments to carry through on what he said was his obligation to his stricken wife. And he beat them, fair and square, with the autopsy results only reinforcing the victory. Anyone should be able to recognize that when your adversary has triumphed over over-whelming odds, he has earned your respect, a hand-shake, and if you cannot rise to an apology, at least the opportunity to go on with his life. Is Thomas Sneddon now going after Michael Jackson for unpaid parking tickets? No. Even Tom Sneddon has more sense than that.

This is the most basic of Golden Rule ethics. Treat your adversary as you would want to be treated yourself. Bush's current version of the Golden Rule seems to be "Do unto others who your political supporters detest what your political supporters would love to do unto him themselves if they had the power."

Uh, that's not quite it, Jeb.

But heck, he knows that. Bush is currently acting on a different rule, a rule that some Bush-bashing treatises have designated as a family credo: "Don't get mad; get even." After everything he has put Michael Schiavo through, his is a particularly transparent, ugly, and despicable example of pettiness, vindictiveness and the misuse of state power. And if Bush were not operating in full Ethics Dunce mode, he would see that…just like almost everybody else.

Al Franken

Al Franken, who has gradually morphed from an edgily intelligent satirical comic into a full-time indignant liberal pundit, has a right to his political opinions, his feuds, and his positional passions. As the primary star of Air America, the left's nascent answer to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the other conservative talk-show hosts who dominate AM radio, Franken has ample air time to get his usually strident, often witty, sometimes perceptive messages out, if not to quite as many listeners as either he or Air America's sponsors would like.

But while accepting the "Freedom of Speech Award" at the New Media Seminar sponsored by Talkers Magazine, Franken demonstrated that he has as little respect for his supporters as he does for his adversaries in the ideology wars.

Franken launched into a 20 minute rant against his conservative counterparts, attacking Limbaugh, Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Bill Bennett. Even when his host, the publisher of TALKERS magazine, urged him to "hurry up," Franken ignored his entreaties.

"It's freedom of speech," said Franken, implying that the award he had just received entitled him to take over the program.

Harrison, the publisher, appropriately responded, "It's not freedom to kill everybody's evening, so why don't you wrap it up?"

But no. Franken felt his pearls of wisdom superseded any obligation of courtesy to the seminar's organizers or their other guests.

"I'm talking about the war in Iraq and I have about two pages left, and I think the people in Walter Reed [Army Medical Center] who've been injured deserve the last two pages of my speech," he said.

"There are people walking out," Harrison pleaded. "We gave you the award and it's time to leave."

"Everyone who wants to leave can leave," said Franken, as he now unofficially appointed himself the master of ceremonies.

Now this truly is a cautionary tale. Franken was disrupting a gathering of hundreds of colleagues, including many philosophical allies, as effectively as any hostile demonstrator intent on shutting it down. Why? Clearly, the answer is that he possessed at that instant (note that the Scoreboard is giving Franken the benefit of the doubt by presuming that such excessive hubris isn't his natural state) absolutely no concern, respect, sense of fairness or modicum of caring for anyone else in the room, including those who had just honored him. The behavior is unethical, and more basically it is ungrateful, ungracious and rude. This was neither the place for a speech nor the time for one, especially after his host objected. Franken was apparently blinded to any ethical obligations because he was overcome with self-righteousness. His cause was just, so expounding on it justified any amount of inconvenience to others. Even the final protest of Harrison as he beseeched Franken to shut up and get off ("We honored you, now honor us. Don't kill our party!") apparently had little effect.

Well, as has been discussed elsewhere on the Scoreboard, being an insensitive jerk is unethical, no matter how much of a rush it gives you or how much you think you deserve the moment. The fact that many of Franken's targets on the right have also accessed The Jerk Within does not give him any additional license to treat others as if they are his props and lackeys. And Franken may well consider the fact that as a self-styled opinion leader, his conduct at the event flies in the face of the well-established tendency of human beings to think less of ideas and arguments that come from unappealing sources.

For an aspiring political pundit and radio personality to inflict a rant on an unwilling audience and to embarrass his hosts in the process is more than just unethical…it is astoundingly dumb.

But that's why we call this category the Ethics Dunce.