The View from a Drawbridge

I had never heard of John Feeley until this week. Now I’d like to shake his hand. It’s refreshing to hear of someone in the public sector who actually has integrity.

Mr. Feeley is resigning as the US Ambassador to Panama, effective March 9^th, because he doesn’t feel he can impartially serve President Trump any longer. A lesser man would have just kept his head down and continued to draw a paycheck. (“Just following orders…”) But not this guy. He took a stand. He decided to do the right thing rather than the easy thing or the self-serving thing, and I’m sure it is going to have a long-lasting impact on his life.

I wish more public servants were like this. I wish no one in congress would show up for the State of the Union address. That would send a strong message to the world that we don’t agree that other countries are shitholes. We don’t agree that it’s okay to grab women. This is not who we are.

When the world asks who we are, I want to tell them that we are John Feeley, and also Walter Shaub, who resigned as the Office of Government Ethics chief last year. I want to tell them that we are every American who marched against Trump and his destructive, hateful policies. I want to tell them that we are every reporter who has brought us the truth in the face of all Trumps threats and lies.

I hope that when the next president is elected, if he or she isn’t another total nut job, the first official act will be to re-hire Feeley and Shaub. We need people with integrity serving the public. We need to demonstrate that ethics still matter in this country.

Thank you, gentlemen, for restoring my faith in human decency at a time when examples of this are awfully thin on the ground.

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