24 May 2007
Crossing the Line
Line Crossing Ceremony, USS Midway, Indian Ocean, 1979
When we crossed the line the first time it was a big deal. Of course you could opt out of the ritual; this was a kinder and friendlier Navy, and I imagine there were some who huddled alone in their bunks to avoid it. Most of the crew had not done it before, and the hardy Shellbacks- the veterans who had done it before- were determined to make it a memorable experience.
Days before we reached it we could see enlisted kids posted up on the bow of the ship by their tormentors to look for the Equator painted on the waves. When the day finally came, it had that endless bright softness of the Indian Ocean. The ship's loudspeaker crackled in all the spaces and the Navigator announced with precision that the line we had been steaming toward had actually been crossed. Pandemonium ensured. I recall a revolt of the Polliwogs, as we uninitiated were called, in the Ready Room, and there were too few veteran Shellbacks to contain us.
It was to no avail. Officer or enlisted, combat vet or newly enlisted, we found ourselves in long lines on the flight deck. We were formally inducted into the realm of Neptunus Rex with a ritual beating of firehoses, crawling over the non-skid surface of the flight-deck, bathed in garbage and forced to kiss the belly of a fat Bos'un's mate slathered with lard.
It was an old-school version of the ritual, and some people got hurt. It was an old-school ship.
I carried the wallet card for years afterwards, carefully laminated, in case I found myself in a situation where I needed to produce my Shellback credentials. I was not going to go through it again, and made a personal resolution that the ceremony was the last initiation rite in which I would participate. I was a man, dammit, finally. No more boot camps or hell weeks or secret rituals.
I vowed to kneel to no one again.
That is why I felt a little sympathy for Monica M. Goodling yesterday. She had to admit crossing the line to a panel of stern members of the House of Representatives. Apparently she did not have a card certifying she had done it before, and after some weeks of negotiations, appeared to be inducted into the society of those who had done so before.
I know we are all shocked that politics has anything to do with the scandal in the Justice Department, one of those “Gambling at Rick's?” moments that we enjoy so much in our national public life. It was one of those things that was intrinsic to the way things have worked of late. I recall fishing for a job on the Hill a couple years ago, and I was asked directly what party I voted for as a qualification. It was a political job, so I did not mind answering honestly.
It was much more rigorous than that, though, and all through the Executive Branch as well. I was fishing for a job last year at one of the Departments, and a senior official bluntly (and not unkindly) asked if I had ever contributed to the Democratic Party. I had been apolitical in my career, and bristled a bit at the question. A friend had run for a seat as a state representative against a fundamentalist loon out West in the last general election, and I contributed to his campaign even if I could not vote for him.
That was an immediate disqualification, and I was told that the White House would check the accuracy of my answer.
There were stories that the civilian jobs in the Iraq Provisional Authority were determined by the litmus test of Row V. Wade, which boggles the mind, but that is how business has been done. Monica was the one who had to lay it out for Congress, and take the very public tonguelashing.
She seemed to be a nice person, soft spoken and deferential in her testimony.
She admitted that she had “crossed the line” on the matter of favoring applicants with solid Republican credentials for positions in the Justice Department, but everyone knew that. It was the accusation that it had gone so far as to break Federal Civil Services rules that caused her to squirm. I was riding in my car at the time, listening to the testimony on CSPAN:
“I may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions and I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account, and I regret those mistakes.”
She downplayed her role in the decision-making, and said her Boss told her not to attend some key meetings so she could deny involvement later. Even though she was the Justice Department's liaison to the White House, she said she never discussed the matter of the prosecutors with the President's political advisor Karl Rove, or Presidential counsel Harriet E. Miers.
I don't know if that is the truth or not, and it doesn't matter. As much as she tried not to, Monica contradicted the sworn testimony of a few of her bosses.
The Prosecutors work for the President and at his pleasure. Messing with the Civil Service is something else. The only reason we have it is to protect ourselves from the political hacks. Corruption in office holders was a plague of the early United States. President Garfield was assassinated in 1881 by a disappointed office seeker, which led to significant reforms, and the Hatch Act of 1940 made the attempt to divorce the Civil Service from politics altogether. Things began to unravel in 1993, when the Act was revised to permit Federal employees to engage in political activity on their own time, which was an approach towards some sort of line.
Monica was clearly engaged in political activity on Uncle Sugar's nickel, and she had to admit she had crossed over into territory that had not been visited since Mr. Garfield's time.
It is a pity, really. She crossed the line, and will not even get a card to certify that she doesn't have to go through the ritual again. In fact, it is just about sure that she will have some entirely new ones.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com