By Matthew G. Bisanz

For those who follow politics, the resignation of Porter Goss as director of the CIA did not follow the usual Bush pattern. While it was unannounced as most of the President’s speeches are, it did not convey the past sense of springing a surprise on the media. Rather it conveyed a sense of fear that they might have been caught doing something had he not resigned when he did.

In the days that followed, we have learned precisely what he did. Goss played poker at the Watergate Hotel with a congressman. Now that doesn’t seem so bad, until one realizes this congressman, Randy Cunningham, was accepting bribes while playing poker, and he brought prostitutes to these games.

Porter Goss’ position is requires an individual with no allegiance to any base. Like a judge reading a sentence, he is supposed to neutrally report on the worldwide intelligence situation to the president. He claims to have spent up to six hours a day preparing the president’s intelligence brief. One may wonder how many of those six hours involved partisan discussions relating to policies such as those he would’ve been discussing with congressman Cunningham over poker.

Additionally, government leaders have a responsibility to hold themselves to a higher standard than an ordinary citizen does. Goss commanded the clandestine operations for the entire nation. How seriously could his subordinates have taken him if they knew of his past nighttime activities? What if another ethically devoid man caught Goss and then bribed him? His actions jeapardized the nation.

Granted, this whole decline in the moral composure of our leaders did not begin with Goss – it started at the Watergate hotel and also involved the director of the CIA.

In 1972, when Nixon’s “plumbers” broke into the Watergate Hotel to tap the Democrat’s phones, Nixon knew he was in trouble. He ordered the director of the CIA to call the director of the FBI and say that the break-in was a matter of national security and to stop investigating. The director of the CIA refused and was fired.

As we all know, Nixon’s actions were later discovered and he resigned. The president thought it better to cover up an operation that he in theory had no knowledge of. His actions forever tarnished the Oval Office, injecting a strain of distrust into the American government’s vein of credibility.

Another famous drop in responsibility did not occur at the Watergate Hotel, but it did involve one of its residents. Bill Clinton’s intern was a resident of that hotel. His denial of their affair led to a complete eradication of the line governing what behavior was permissible for a president to participate in and what behavior was forbidden.

In reality, the American President and the people he chooses to associate with should have impeccable morals. Besides nationwide embarrassment, the thought of any official in a position involving national security with a damaging personal affair scares me. It makes the individual vunerable to a host of unethical actions, including blackmail.

It was said that during the darkest days of Nixon’s term, Kissinger called the generals at the Pentagon and told them to check with him if Nixon called and ordered them to fire their missiles.

That alone should show the danger of selecting less than honest men for positions of power. Bush knew Goss had political baggage from his earlier days in Washington and Goss should have known that to be the director of the CIA, one cannot socialize in the same circles as a private citizen.

Goss should not have just resigned, he should have been fired by Bush for failing to meet the standard of being a leader that the American people need and deserve.