Hello!

Goodbye!

If President Bush 1) still could remember his pledge to insist on the highest possible ethical standards in his administration, 2) had any interest in (belatedly) making good on that pledge and 3) could spot an ethically clueless staffer who was carrying a blinking neon sign on his head that said "ETHICALLY CLUELESS!!!," he would give his newly appointed domestic policy advisor Karl Zinsmeister the old heave-ho immediately. But he can't, doesn't, and hasn't, and that should bother everyone who believes that ethical government starts at the top.

Zinsmeister, the former editor of the American Enterprise Institute's magazine, confirmed a press account that he had taken a 2004 published profile of him that appeared in the weekly Syracuse New Times and altered the text before reprinting it on the AEI magazine's web site. He had apparently regretted some of his comments in the interview, especially the one in which he said that "People in Washington are morally repugnant, cheating, shifty human beings." So after he gave the article his undisclosed makeover on the AEA site, the comment was replaced with this: "I learned in Washington that there is an 'overclass' in this country stocked with cheating, shifty human beings that's just as morally repugnant as our 'underclass.' "

Zinmeister is an experienced editor, and yet no ethical bells went off in his well-trained head when he misrepresented his own additions as part of a previously published news story. But it's worse than that; just read his "explanation" for this gross dishonesty. Zinmeister admitted that he had goofed, but said his intent was to "correct the record while protecting a young journalist who had made mistakes."

What??? First of all, it is not at all clear that Zinmeister's goal was to "correct the record," he altered the record because he didn't like what the record revealed. Second, the obvious and easiest way to "protect" the young journalist would have been not to reprint the article at all. Third, Zinmeister, under the guise of being solicitous of his young colleague, is actually implying that he never made the original comment, and that his interviewer either botched the interview or made the quote up. His is a thoroughly despicable excuse that shifts the blame to another and attempts to rationalize a transparent deception that was made for nobody's benefit except his own.

Not that the White House is capable of seeing this either. Its new press secretary Tony Snow said that yes, Zinsmeister erred in making the changes, but his intentions were pure. "This was done not out of animosity," Snow explained. It was "an attempt to set the record straight and he did it in an unartful way." Is this, then the White House policy on official dishonesty? It's tolerable if the liar meant well?? And what are we to make of the word "unartful" here? "Unartful" because he got caught? Zinsmeister needs to get better at covering his tracks, does he?

Publishing an article while representing that it is the original version when one has edited, cut, supplemented or otherwise changed it isn't "unartful"…it's deceptive, dishonest, unprofessional and a copyright violation. Zinsmeister isn't a "young journalist," not by a longshot. He knew the rules, and broke them anyway. Welcome to the Bush Administration, sir!

The other disturbing part of the story is that Zinsmeister thought his surreptitiously reworked comment, dismissing the American "underclass" as "morally repugnant," was in some way an improvement over his original quote. It's too much, perhaps, to expect the Bush administration to get upset about that. It should not be too much to expect it to rapidly jettison a high level policy advisor whose rotten ethical instincts are, as he might say, a matter of record.

But apparently it is.