Our leaders are failing us

The disposition on the part of Americans to accept that our leaders know best has gradually dissipated in recent years by, first, the lack of integrity of those leaders; second, by the increasing flow of information about what those leaders are up to; and, third, by their increasing efforts to conceal what they are doing.

My anger on that subject has been prompted by the juxtaposition of two events. First, I am writing on Martin Luther King’s birthday. We still can’t be sure who was responsible for his assassination. The loss was inestimable, particularly because of his leadership in the fight against racism and the Vietnam War.

I don’t know anyone who thinks that a petty criminal, James Earl Ray, did it all by himself. The price we have paid in terms of the lack of trust between Americans of color and whites cannot be measured, which probably was reinforced by certain attitudes toward Barack Obama, our first African-American president, including on the part of our current president.

The second impetus for this column is the status of the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into the relationship between President Donald Trump and the Russians. We urgently need to know what Mr. Mueller has discovered, as opposed to eventually seeing a report redacted beyond comprehensibility or even withheld from public view.

There is a growing suspicion that we in the public are being slow-rolled, that Mr. Trump is perhaps even being protected by the continued withholding of the report’s conclusions, perhaps on the false premise that it will damage the presidency as an institution and that we citizens are not grown up enough to live with that. But what about the possibility that we will not learn whether Mr. Trump, on the basis of his personal debt, is being manipulated by Russian President Vladimir V. Putin?

This kind of thing is not new. Nor is it partisan. Our government, for some indiscernible reason, 55 years later is still keeping secret full information about the Nov. 23, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy. At one time, we were told that it was to protect the sensibilities of the Kennedy family. Or was it to protect the scorecards of potential candidates for public office among its members? What might be covered up by non-release? Were the Cubans involved? Were the Russians? Was the American mob? How is it that the federal government is still holding out on us on the Kennedy assassination?

Then there is James Earl Ray. King was killed 50 years ago. That grave wound to the American body politic, with the results still seen in some American cities, needed to be probed thoroughly and the results made known to us. What remains is a disfiguring scar. Who was behind King’s killing? With what goal in mind?

The results of institutional cover-up are now showing themselves tragically as the Roman Catholic Church is being torn up by revelations and allegations of child abuse by priests, which were covered up by church leaders. Whether this phenomenon is a cause or symptom of the church’s ailments, the results are plain: money problems, a shortage of priests and an overall loss of credibility, which plays into trends in American and other societies. It also plays out as another reason for Americans no longer to accept that their leaders, including their spiritual leaders, know best. Sunlight prevents shortcomings, or at least makes them less damaging.

It would reflect paranoia to assert that all of our leaders lack integrity. But it isn’t paranoiac to say that leaders who can avoid responsible oversight often get up to mischief. Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC invested and lost $250,000 in what turned out to be a fly-by-night air carrier, OneJet. We need to know, by name, who did that and whether the hospital’s board, by name, approved it. How would it feel to have scraped together a widow’s-mite contribution to Children’s, then to learn that its directors threw away a quarter of a million dollars in a shaky investment?

Then there are the British, arguably now equally misgoverned, heading rapidly toward the status of a body floating down the Thames River, entangled in weeds. I cite them because we, as Americans, occasionally look at the United Kingdom as relatively well-governed, even though we cut loose from it in 1776.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s divorce pact from the European Union has been rejected by Parliament. Lawmakers haven’t replaced her yet because the Conservative Party wants to hold onto power and cannot agree on who would take her place. The whole thing was started by her predecessor, David Cameron, who promised the British a referendum on Brexit to try to squeeze out a few more votes for himself to stay in power. There used to be Churchill, even Harold Wilson.

I’m not sure how we or they find better people to lead us. We are long past the point when the Donald Trumps, Nancy Pelosis and Chuck Schumers should have found agreement to pay our airport screeners, traffic controllers and border-protection officials, all of whom earn modest salaries. It probably will take a plane crash.