Читать книгу Blaming No One - Dan Inc. Whitman - Страница 10

I always liked P.J. Crowley. You won’t find many people saying so in public these days, especially after March 12 when he became radioactive. That was when he said the conditions of detention of Private Bradley Manning, a Wikileaks source, were “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” With some hullabaloo, Crowley was bounced the next day as spokesman for the U.S. Department of State. Asked if he had thought about repenting, on March 27 he said, “I don’t regret saying what I said...I spoke my mind and I haven’t changed my view.”

Look him up on the Internet these days. You’ll see a whole lot about the wax melting from his wings of Icarus that day in March, but almost nothing about who he is and what he did to make the State Department more credible.

First of all, how can one dislike a person who publishes his name in a form that means “nightwear.” Crowley does have a first name from birth, which is “Philip.” I haven’t seen the long form birth certificate (July 28, 1951), but “Philip” seems like an OK name to me, even dignified. Maybe too much so for P.J., who I guess picked it up somewhere in school in Brockton, Massachusetts, and allowed it to stick into adulthood.

Crowley’s father spent two years as a POW in an East German prison camp. P.J. himself served 26 years in the U.S. Air Force, and got to work with Javier Solana, Secretary General of NATO, from April to June, 1999. He was Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs from May 26, 2009, to March 13, 2011.

Though I never drafted texts for Crowley, I was briefly part of his world, and I always felt he served the Department well.

I had a single moment with him in June, 2009. He gathered any of us who could make it over to the Public Affairs office on a couple hours notice, to meet him after he replaced Sean McCormack as spokesman. About forty of us got to the meeting. We mostly knew one another, as the PA world is finite.

Crowley was affable, engaging, and open-minded. American officials talk a lot about “listening” and generally do very little of it in fact. Crowley was in genuine listening mode that day. I mean, really.

He asked for feedback, comments, advice. As often happens in any organization at such times, discomfort happened, and no one knew what to say or do. He asked twice, three times, but met the trepidation of bureaucrats fearing a trap set by the new boss we didn’t know yet.

I applied my “Rule of Three,” and raised my hand only the after the third time he asked and no one else had a thing to say. I knew I’d be retiring from DoS soon enough.

“Mr. Crowley, I hope the State Department can say things more clearly now with you here, say things it really means. If we did, people might start listening to us.” I am paraphrasing, I don’t remember the exact words.

A high ranking colleague countered me: “But journalists do listen to us. They pay a lot of attention to the things we say.”

In for a dime, in for a dollar. I answered, “Right. And the reason they parse our words is that we say so little, and they are trying to pick up any nuggets of actual content that might slip through the clearance process.”

People in the room laughed a little, and so did Crowley. We’re talking about a considerable apparatus which issued basically a one-size-fits-all statement most days for most topics: “We view the situation with concern, and are monitoring it closely. We call on all parties for restraint, and look forward to a speedy resolution.” Pablum, I think.

Crowley took the point in his gracious way. I never saw him again. I wish I could say, “...And the tone of State Department statements became clearer and more substantive following my comment,” but that would be self serving. I can’t prove it, but I think the voice of the State Department did become more clear during that period. Crowley should get lots of credit for this, I accept none. The Department actually said things and people did start to listen. It’s always an imperfect process, one step forward, three steps back, as during SecState Clinton’s first trip to Beijing, where she gave the Chinese government a pass on human rights. But this was a work in progress, and she got it right the second time, and should be noted for doing so.

I like my State Department colleagues a lot. They are smart, they try hard, and they care.

Of course there are those few who spoil it for the rest of us, the Mad Hatter types who say things like “Lack of political will!” – a phrase that has never meant anything at all to me. (“Squark! Squark! Lack of political will! Squark!”) I think people who cling to these empty phrases may be victims of Tourette Syndrome.

P.J. Crowley didn’t have Tourette’s. He thought, then spoke, and he did so in the spirit of the Department at its best. One day we will see how he added to DoS’s greatest asset: credibility.

Crowley lived the dream of every bureaucrat. When he saw it was time to leave, he went entirely rogue, just once. Setting the record straight after his career’s destruction, he said “The United States, as an exceptional country in the world, has to be seen as practicing what we preach.”

I think it’s also called “going out with a bang.” Exiting stage left, he said, “I’m not a larger-than-life person. I’m short, bald, and old.”

Tall enough to reach the ground, as Abe Lincoln would have said. And one day I hope to see P.J. again, and tell him so in person.