Institutionalizing Distrust Between Lawmakers and Staff

The slippery slope toward Capitol Hill workplace anarchy

Sen. John Fetterman — Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

In Washington, D.C. there’s no such thing as reaching a “new low.”

It’s just a perpetual state of being.

Amid the controversy surrounding President Biden’s cancer diagnosis — and speculation that it was cravenly dropped into Sunday’s news cauldron to blunt tomorrow’s Jake Tapper/Alex Thompson “Original Sin” book release — comes a Politico column making the case that it's a good thing when staffers publicly disclose their boss’s “erratic moods and risky behaviors.”

Michael Schaffer writes:

This month’s blockbuster New York magazine piece on Sen. John Fetterman’s mental health challenges raised eyebrows for a lot of reasons. But one little-noticed aspect jumped out at Beltway veterans: Fetterman’s former chief of staff, Adam Jentleson, actually went on the record with damning allegations — denied by Fetterman — that the Pennsylvania Democrat was a diminished, troubled figure who had gone off his medications.

Whatever you think of Jentleson’s decision to go public, it was a shocking break with the 'staffer code' that has long ruled Washington underlings’ behavior. Instead of keeping mum, Jentleson shared a close-up view of his boss’s erratic moods and risky behaviors, as well as contemporaneous correspondence outlining his concerns to Fetterman’s medical team.

Some argue Jentleson was driven more by partisan objectives than public-spirited concern. I’ll sidestep that question as I don’t know the guy, and have no legit basis to judge his motives.

But Schaffer also speculates on what this shift could mean for future relationships between elected officials and their staff — especially in the wake of President Biden’s documented cognitive decline:

With the Biden debacle looming large, the next cadre of insiders is likely to think differently when it comes to being quiet about the boss’s state of mind and body…

This is, I think, great news.

Actually, it’s terrible news.

The idea that staff should now feel emboldened to “narc” on their boss over perceived physical, cognitive, or behavioral anomalies sets a horrendous precedent.

In a government culture already drowning in dysfunction, adding a new, paranoia-driven layer of mistrust between lawmakers and staff would only deepen the breakdown. It would institutionalize suspicion and wariness in a workplace where staff cohesion and collaboration is the only way to succeed.

In the case of Sen. Fetterman — or any public official — if you can’t trust your chief of staff, who the hell can you trust?

And to normalize the idea that staffers — or even interns, taken to an extreme — can go to the media with judgments about their boss’s mental or physical state is a slippery slope toward workplace anarchy.

To his credit, Schaffer also acknowledges the murkiness of it all:

Reporting standards for scandals are built on verifiable things: A copy of the corrupt contract, evidence of the unethical quid pro quo. But when the story is mental decline, the evidence is always going to be foggier. Humans have good days and bad days... As a result, reporters who have no problem asking whether a pol is a crook can find themselves tongue-tied when pressing an official about whether he’s lost his marbles.

But in today’s media ecosystem — where “the media” can mean anyone with a blog with which to dump allegation-riddled content into the public domain under a “truth-telling” pretext — is reckless.

That’s especially the case in D.C. — where the operational modus operandi is “level the charge first and ask questions later.”

And there’s another practical workplace question: Who would want to hire someone known for publicly turning on their boss?

No one I know.

I concur with John Lawrence, one of several former chiefs of staff to Nancy Pelosi, who said:

“Your whole job as a chief of staff is, you’re there to protect. There’s a measure of responsibility in accepting and playing that kind of a staff role that presumes that you are not going to use the intimacy of your relationship with your boss [against them].”

That says it about as well as it can be said.

Unless there’s criminality, legal malfeasance, or official misconduct, a staffer concerned about their boss’s health or behavior has just two honorable options: raise it internally, as is appropriate — or resign.