The Buck Does Not Stop

An interesting commentary from the New York Times compares Harry Truman's famous "The Buck Stops Here" sign and John Kennedy's acceptance of responsibility for the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 to what's currently going in American politics, where everyone (except perhaps Dick Clarke) is running for cover in the aftermath of 9/11. Says Michael Orsekes in an article tantalizingly called Where Does the Buck Stop? Not Here, while accepting responsibility is an important part of everyday life, at the U.S. presidential level it is "getting [increasingly] rarer, as a national culture of shifting blame permeates American politics."

 Posted by glenn