Portraits in Loyalty

Loyalty. It's something we all know a good deal about, even if we don't always realize its complexity. We are loyal to family, old friends, roommates and blockmates, our school, even to our baseball team. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s essay, "The End of Loyalty" which appeared in the March 9 issue of The New Yorker laid out a current philosophical debate: where does loyalty come from, and do we care about its (apparent) demise?

President Clinton's recent difficulties have tested the loyalty of his closest advisors and former advisors. One might argue that some, like George Stephanopoulos (who has gone on record with his concern over Clinton's alleged actions), have failed that test of loyalty. Gates seems to believe that he did, noting near the end of his piece that often "loyalty must give way to 'principle'--this we know--but aren't there times, too, when principle must give way to loyalty?" But I'm not sure it's quite that simple. Three portraits of loyalty--two historical and one in the more recent past--might give us a clearer picture of the complexities of loyalty.

Consider Dave Powers, President Kennedy's longtime assistant, personal valet and friend, who died last weekend at the age of 85. Powers epitomized loyalty, helping to preserve the Kennedy legacy as curator of the JFK Library in Dorchester. Kennedy credited Powers with making his career in politics, for it was the older Powers who helped the still-ailing young candidate for the 10th Congressional seat up creaky stairs in Cambridge and Charlestown tenements to meet voters. Powers was behind the scenes for every campaign thereafter. In turn, Powers credited Kennedy with taking a poor newsboy and bringing him into politics. In the 35 years after the death of his boss and friend, Powers remained unfailingly loyal. He never revealed what indiscretions he might have witnessed or secrets he might have known. For him, the campaign never ended. He introduced himself enthusiastically to every volunteer at the library, never forgot a face and always ended conversations with, "Thanks for all you're doing for us."

A portrait of loyalty tested is the one used by Gates in his article, that of Rose Mary Woods, Richard Nixon's devoted secretary. She risked ridicule to explain (untruthfully, of course) why there was an 18-and-a-half minute gap in the Oval Office tapes, conjuring a picture of her acrobatic and spastic self pressing the wrong button of the recording machine while trying to answer the phone. As she saw it, she would have been nowhere without Nixon, and she would not betray him in his darkest hour to his enemies.

Gates praises Woods for her loyalty, but I wonder what kind of loyalty it really was. She chose loyalty to person over loyalty to country, deciding that the greater good of the country was not worth betraying the President for whatever crimes he had committed. Woods's portrait is where the question of loyalty becomes murkiest, and I'm not sure how many of us would point to her as an example of all that is good about loyalty.

A final portrait is that of George Stephanopoulos in a scene from the Clinton campaign documentary, "The War Room." The night before the November 1992 election, the phone rang at campaign headquarters with another sex scandal about to break on the other end of the line. Stephanopoulos calmly but urgently persuaded the caller that the allegation would not hold up in public and that coming forward was not worth the certain resultant embarrassment of the accuser. At that moment, it seemed, the full weight of the election's outcome was on the shoulders of a loyal campaign strategist, trying to quash yet one more rumor in the hours before the polls opened. Stephanopoulos today is an analyst at ABC, the first in Clinton's circle (past or present) to suggest that the President's alleged actions might call for impeachment. Such an apparent about-face, from the behind-the-scenes commitment in 1992 to the public concern in 1998, certainly seems to indicate a failed test of loyalty.

Stephanopoulos, unlike Powers and Woods, was not completely "made" by President Clinton. He was acknowledged as an intelligent strategist before the campaign and was central to the election of the President in 1992. We don't know what promises to Stephanopoulos Clinton made and then broke, but this kind of professional independence allowed him to grapple publicly with loyalty to principle where Powers and Woods knew only loyalty to person.

These three portraits of differing kinds of loyalty are certainly colored by the reporter's attachment to the person. I had the good fortune to meet Dave Powers and admired his unswerving loyalty, and I once met George Stephanopoulos and, having admired his intelligence and commitment, am reluctant to label him a traitor for being willing to ask the same important questions in public that he used to ask of the President in private. But whatever the case, these three individuals highlight for us the different circumstances of loyalty. I would argue that instead of loyalty giving way to principle or vice versa, loyalty and principle are inextricably intertwined, and that the correct application of both depends on the context.

Susannah B. Tobin '00 is a classics concentrator in Lowell House. Her column appears on alternate Thursdays.