The study says the “Effective Leadership — Senior Leaders” category “measures the level of respect employees have for senior leaders, satisfaction with the amount of information provided by management, and perceptions about senior leaders’ honesty, integrity and ability to motivate employees.” Only five Cabinet members — led by Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton
, who scored 56.9 — managed to get above 50 on a scale of 1 to 100. Treasury Secretary
Tim Geithner
, who, we should point out, never, ever, ever worked at Goldman Sachs, improved by 2.6 points to come in second at 52.3. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano dropped 1.7 and came in last at 41.4.
The not-a-crook files
The latest Richard Nixon texts and tapes are out — including his previously sealed 1975 Watergate grand jury testimony — and scholars and Nixon-philes and
-phobes are poring over the paper carcass.
Initial reports: The Trickster has come through once again, with some revelations — though nothing really new on the 1972 break-in. It was done by what he called “clowns” and “bunglers.”
He notes, however, that wiretaps and the like were commonplace.
And nothing on the famous 181
/
2 minutes of tape from a key Watergate coverup meeting.
We haven’t had a chance to wallow in depth through the nearly 300 pages of grand jury transcripts, done after a pardon from President Gerald Ford — a pardon that Nixon says he only reluctantly accepted.
Overall, the documents show that “in his own way, Nixon was a great communicator,” says
Steven Aftergood
, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists. “His presence and personality are vividly conveyed by the transcript. With Nixon, it was not just business. It was personal.”
Very personal. A colleague points us to Page 94, where Nixon tells the prosecutor that he is taking blood-thinning medication every day at noon.
“That means that if I am ever in an accident and start to bleed I will bleed to death unless the doctor is there within ten minutes,” he reveals. Then he gets off one of the great Nixon lines to
Richard Davis
, the prosecutor questioning him.
“Want one?”
And on Page 219, Nixon lifts off to another planet, a place where he’s clearly talking to the paintings of former presidents hanging on the wall.
“I would say that our campaigns in ’68 and in 1972,” he testifies, “in terms of what we did, were clean campaigns.”
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