Ethics Decisions and Social Change

Ethical Decisions and Social Change

For this discussion, I am going to use my favorite subject on the use of ethical decision making, the Presidency. When he was running for the presidency, Obama promised that there would be no lobbyist allowed Access to his administration. Immediately after he was sworn in as president, he forgot his promise. (Downing) "but besides from tour groups, the president’s most popular guests appear to be lobbyists working for companies that usually have cushy relationships with the White House." I am so glad that he kept his word on Lobbyist. Granted after becoming president is a lot different than when you run for president, so perhaps his ethics problem was he did not understand the job he was seeking.

The voters are seeing the problem in the ethics of the Obama administration, and they are rejecting it. When a convicted felon wins 40% of the popular vote against a sitting president there is a problem with that president. Keith Judd a convicted felon won 72,000 votes compared to Obama 106,000 (Weiner). Again in Arkansas Obama lost 40% of the vote to John Wolfe an attorney, and then in Kentucky 42% of the vote went to anybody but Obama (Blake). Ethics is not Obama's only issue, but it is major and it is affecting the rest of his decision making.

Why would this happen to Obama, when it did not happen to Clinton, because of Paula Jones? Perhaps one reason was that Clinton at least had an appearance of being ethical. Obama does not even have a fake appearance of being ethical; everything he does is political. In his paper, S. J. Yeager discusses his survey on ethical behavior versus political responsiveness, and how that behavior affects the culture on an organization. (Yeager) "…a supervisor’s emphasis on ethical behavior by employees is even more important than an emphasis on either political responsiveness or merit". In this case, Obama's ethics or lack of ethics, which means pushing politics, is having a negative effect on an entire country. People watch what is going on at the top, whether it is Obama, or Clintons indiscretions with interns, then think if he can do it then I can also, because it must be ok.

References

Downing, Larry. Even after Obama's promise, lobbyists still run the White House. Reuters, USA. ( May, 2012) http://rt.com/usa/news/white-house-lobbyists-post-825/

Weiner, Rachel. Why felon Keith Judd did so well against Obama in West Virginia. (05/09/2012) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/why-felon-keith-judd-did-so-well-against-obama-in-west-virginia/2012/05/09/gIQA7GwtCU_blog.html

Blake, Aaron. Obama loses 40 percent of the primary vote in Arkansas, Kentucky The Washington Post. (05/22/2012) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/obama-loses-more-than-40-percent-of-kentucky-primary-voters-to-uncommitted-option/2012/05/22/gIQAlYHEjU_blog.html#

Yeager, S. J., Hildreth, W. B., Miller, G. J., & Rabin, J. (2007). The relative effects of a supervisory emphasis on ethical behavior versus political responsiveness. Public Integrity, 9(3), 265–283.