Depending on how forgiving one is inclined to be toward President Bush, his 2000 promise to have a zero-tolerance policy regarding ethics violations in his administration was either a naïve assumption or a bad joke. Even if one were to make the massive leap of faith necessary to believe that the President applied such standards to himself, it would be practically impossible for the anyone to maintain high ethical standards when dealing daily with the serial ethical miscreants leading the House (the DeLay Gang), the Senate (Led by that ethics triple threat---medicine, government, and corporate---Bill Frist), the Pentagon (whatever else it is, the Abu Ghraib fiasco was an ethics abomination), the CIA (where agents in an organization dedicated to national security leak classified information to the press for political gain), and drop-in crooks like Jack Abramoff. But Bush has also tolerated a lot of questionable (the Scoreboard is bending over backwards limbo-style to be nice here) conduct from advisor Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney, not to mention the indictment of Cheney's Chief-of-Staff. Whether there are good and practical reasons for justifying, excusing, or just putting up with these matters is irrelevant; the fact is that the President's "zero tolerance" pledge on ethics vanished approximately the second it had to be applied.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson gave the President yet another opportunity to show he still remembers that pledge. Jackson told a Dallas business group on April 28 about an encounter with a minority contractor who had successfully qualified for a HUD contract after ten years of failure. When the man expressed to Jackson his appreciation, he also mentioned that he was not a fan of Jackson's boss, the President. "He didn't get the contract," Jackson told the group, according to the published reports. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

Thus the head of HUD proudly admitted in public that he violated federal law, not to mention basic principles of fairness. Not surprisingly, it didn't take long for his comments to incite political critics, as well as set off alarms for HUD's inspector general. Jackson, recognizing the taste of shoe leather, decided to defuse the situation with this deft explanation: he lied. The story was fiction.

As they used to say on "Family Feud" no matter how absurd a contestant's guess was, "Good answer!!" We now know that the HUD Secretary behaved unethically in one of two very basic ways. He either broke the law, or he lied. Either he can't be trusted, or he can't be believed. (This episode also raises at least a prima facie case that Jackson is an idiot, but to be fair, President Bush never promised a zero-tolerance policy toward idiocy.)

But the President, his ethics pledge now but a wisp of nostalgic memory, sent out new press secretary Tony Snow to deliver the message that "Alphonso Jackson has admitted that what he said earlier was improper, that it was a mistake and the president accepts that and still supports a man with whom he's had a long and close relationship."

Let's begin with the fact that this statement itself is unethical, as it is misleading. Jackson didn't merely say that his comment was "improper," he said it was a lie. Then Snow's comment dives into a complete rejection of the principle that unethical conduct warrants removal from the President's employ:

• Jackson "admitted" his unethical conduct, or at least admitted that his comments about it were "improper." But high government officials aren't supposed to just admit misconduct; they're supposed to be above it…they're not supposed to do it, period. If they do, they aren't qualified to serve.
• Jackson made "a mistake." Yes, and Ken Lay, O.J. Simpson, Pete Rose, Duke Cunningham, and Lee Harvey Oswald made mistakes too. That doesn't mean they should be Secretary of HUD, and it doesn't mean that Jackson should either. Ethical misconduct is usually a "mistake," even when it's intentional. It usually becomes "a mistake" only when one is caught at it. The key issue is whether it is an excusable or understandable mistake. Jackson's was not.
• "Bush still supports a man with whom he's had a long and close relationship." OK, now at least we know what the President's real standards for ethical conduct are. If he has a long relationship with you, you don't have to be ethical all the time, as long as you admit that your unethical conduct was "improper" and "a mistake" once it's exposed.

If Secretary Jackson he had a shred of integrity or any comprehension of the ethical imperatives of government office, he would resign. Since he won't, President Bush needs to go back and read his statements about insisting on the highest standards of ethics in his Administration. It's too late to fix his shattered pledge, but it's not too late to fire his HUD Secretary.