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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm okay. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm doing fine. The day we are recording listeners, I am wrapping up about of COVID 19.
N. Rodgers: Yes and yours truly delivered groceries to Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: What could only be described as a man list [inaudible] to apple pies and milk.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Just bring me what I'll survive on Nia. I'm like, okay. That seems weird but I love you so I'll do it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We're a little late on this because it's going to be a couple of weeks after people hear it. But I wanted to mention something to you or rather I wanted to ask you something thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: About succession, not the television show, which by the way, is interesting and people should watch it. But if you have access to Netflix, but about who's in charge of something when someone is say, oh, I don't know, in the ICU for prostate cancer. I mean, that seems specific because it is.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, this is one of the more fascinating aspects of a situation that arose in the news. This is in the news episode.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, we're now a couple three weeks on. But Aughie and I have been talking about it, about how this is like if I went to have surgery and didn't tell my boss, Patina would fire me when I got back. She'd be like, are you insane? You can't just not show up, not be around, and not tell anybody. That's not how jobs work in the real world. What would Jason Arnold do to you if you just didn't show up for class three or four days and didn't tell anybody and didn't have a, I mean, seriously.
J. Aughenbaugh: If that happened, Jason and I would have a conversation where my continued employment at VCU would be discussed.
N. Rodgers: Would be called into serious questions.
J. Aughenbaugh: Mind you listeners, and this is not my usual self deprecating, false modesty stick. But I think it's safe to say that in the big scheme of Virginia government in VCU, Virginia Commonwealth University, what it's supposed to do. Nia and I are not the most important employees of VCU.
N. Rodgers: Oh, not even close. I mean, I agreed that you and I are tiny little cogs in a huge machinery. But if president, wow, disappeared for a few days and didn't tell anybody, that would be much more noticeable, don't you think?
J. Aughenbaugh: But to our point and the answer to your question is yes. But to the point that we're making, if either of us in our lowly bureaucratic positions need to inform our immediate superior.
N. Rodgers: Then how is the Secretary of Defense, not telling the president?
J. Aughenbaugh: What we're talking about here, folks, if you haven't picked up on it yet. After a rather long wind up is that this is an episode that discusses the Defense Secretary Austin's secret hospitalization.
N. Rodgers: Secretary Austin.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, Secretary Austin was in intensive care for days and he did not inform the following, the National Security Council, which the Department of Defense is a rather important part of, he didn't tell the White House, including the President, and he did not tell members of the United States Congress who sit on the various national security defense committees.
N. Rodgers: Now, normally, if you're having a quiet time in the world, that might not be-
J. Aughenbaugh: A big deal.
N. Rodgers: As big as thing. But I don't know if anybody's noticed.
J. Aughenbaugh: The world's on fire here, folks.
N. Rodgers: The world is on fire. In the Middle East, you've got Ukraine, Russia, you've got China, Taiwan, you've got the Houthi rebels now with their whole, I'm going to set fire to the Red Sea. All this stuff is going on.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is beyond the national security threats that are posed by, for instance, North Korea and the state of their.
N. Rodgers: This is aside from the normal stuff. The normal stuff that goes on in our hemisphere. With all the interesting people who are trying to like the President of Argentina. They're going to set fire to the place or whatever all this things going on. This was a particularly not good time to just all disappearance stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is what we do know, and this is just a brief summary. On December 22, Secretary Austin had surgery for what we now know was for prostate cancer. This required an overnight hospital stay. On January 1st of this year, the secretary had to be taken by ambulance and was admitted into intensive care at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, DC.
N. Rodgers: Which is an excellent hospital by the way.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes it is, and it takes care of all of our major federal government officials. He was experiencing severe pain due to developing a post operative infection. As of Monday, January 8th, he was no longer intensive care, but he was still at Walter Reed. Now, what we've been able to piece together is that Senior Department of Defense officials did not become aware of Austin's condition until January 2nd, the day after his admittance into intensive care. The National Security Council and the White House were not informed until Thursday, January 4th, and congressional leadership was not told until Friday, January 5th. This then leads us to, the big questions. Why the delay? Why did Austin delay in telling his immediate Department of Defense staff for example, we do know his chief deputy. Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks had to fill in for Austin at an event in Puerto Rico on January 2 but was not told why she was being sent in his steed.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. It was just like he's not feeling Puerto Rico today. We're going to need you to pop down there and do the speech. It's crazy. It's crazy to me and and the thing about it is, is there was hell and high water to get this guy in the position because he's military. If you don't have a background on this folks, a military person has never been in charge of the Department of Defense, because the theoretical view of that was that a civilian should be making those decisions. Not military because military would be more inclined perhaps to a war footing. Perhaps more inclined to, oh, I don't know, a coup. Like there's all these other reasons why that's been a civilian all along.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, there was a federal law that Secretary Austin had to get a waiver because for the longest time, the big concern is you want a civilian who is not a former member of the military to run the military. You want civilian control of that department. That in a democracy, you want to make sure that you have civilians providing oversight.
N. Rodgers: What you're trying to avoid hunters, that's one of the things you're trying to avoid. Military takeovers, but you're also to avoid military myopia.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The viewpoint of if I have a gun, everything is prey. If I have a hammer, every single thing I run across the nail.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: So you're trying to avoid that by having a civilian go, wait, wait , wait. Do we really care about that? Do we really need to be involved in that? And if we do and they're convinced, then they say, yeah, go ahead. But if they're not convinced, I mean, that's probably kept us out of some stuff that we might have gotten involved in otherwise.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then this gets to the next relevant point or the next relevant question. We have civilian control, which means that the Secretary of Defense has people over top of them and more specifically, you have the National Security Council, which is supposed to integrate not only the Department of Defense, but the Department of State. The Central Intelligence Agency.
N. Rodgers: I was going to say the various agencies, the very alphabet agencies, like whoever is involved in.
J. Aughenbaugh: The National Security Council, which is trying to go ahead and make sure that the world does not explode needs to know.
N. Rodgers: When a team member is down.
J. Aughenbaugh: Down, yeah. We have a fully functioning civilian head of the Department of Defense.
N. Rodgers: We're not slamming Lloyd Austin personally in the sense of, unfortunately, statistics show that if men live long enough, this is an issue they will have to deal with. That this is a medical concern for men everywhere. Just as and if it had been a female head of the Department of Defense. Female also if they live long enough, they have menopause, they have all kinds of things. So we're not slamming people's medical issues nor are we saying that that disqualifies somebody from service. Oh, well, he should have quit the minute he knew he had prostate issues. Of course not. What he should have done was put somebody else in charge briefly.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The way we do with the Presidency. The presidency now has, and this was an issue before Kennedy, so now a post Kennedy, we actually have a plan of succession. Whereas before it was like what do you think we got to do? Which is a terrible idea. And I will forever love Alexander Hague for standing up during Reagan's shooting and saying, I got this. Then, and the reporters in the room all going, oh, okay and then wait, somebody went later and went, wait, is that right?
J. Aughenbaugh: What about Vice President Bush?
N. Rodgers: Is that right? That doesn't seem right.
J. Aughenbaugh: General Hayes. You are Reagan's Chief of Staff.
N. Rodgers: You're not in the line of succession.
J. Aughenbaugh: According to the 25th Amendment. You're not listed, dude.
N. Rodgers: But I mean, that not being an issue, if he had just appointed his deputy and said, guess what, for the next 10 days, you're the acting head of the Department of Defense. She would have said I and that would have been.
J. Aughenbaugh: And again, that's the reason why the Deputy Secretary of Defense is nominated by the President, vetted by the Senate, voted on by the Senate, et cetera. Because, the assumption is at times the Secretary of Defense, just like the Secretary of State, or the Secretary of the Treasury or whatever, may be incapacitated. But the question that arose was, there doesn't seem to have been some chain, which is bizarre.
N. Rodgers: Weird for the Department of Defense.
J. Aughenbaugh: But there didn't seem to be a chain of command to deal with this particular situation. Now, it's been reported by the Department of Defenses primary spokesperson Major General Patrick Ryder that Austin wanted to maintain medical privacy. Now I get that.
N. Rodgers: HIPAA, we've discussed that before the idea that you have privacy in your medical, that's great. You don't have to tell anybody why you're leaving. When I put in a leave slip for a sick day, I don't go into detail about what's wrong with me. I put in out sick and my boss says, I'm sorry, I hope you feel better and that's the end of that. I'm not expected, I a lowly minion librarian am not expected to tell her what is wrong with me. There is certainly no expectation. Is it Admiral Austin? I'm sorry. Secretary. No Secretary Austin because that's his highest title.
J. Aughenbaugh: I think he was in the Army.
N. Rodgers: Oh, General.
J. Aughenbaugh: He was a General.
N. Rodgers: But I mean, for Secretary Austin, he could have just said, peace out people I'm going away for a medical thing and I'll see you in five days. He didn't have to tell them what it was so that I'm not buying what he's selling there. Well, what his spokesman is selling there. I think that what this was was a person who is used to pushing through. Pushed through the pain, pushed through the whatever and I can still make decisions. But what we had was either, and I don't like either one of these choices either, he was not making decisions and other people were making decisions for him while this was going on. No one knew who was making decisions so there's a lack of accountability there. Or he was making decisions while he was in ICU, which is likely not always, but likely he was on some pain medication. We know for sure he was distracted because he was in the ICU.
J. Aughenbaugh: We know he had to go back to Walter Reed, because he was in severe pain. Typically, what hospitals do when you're in for pain is to give you pain medication.
N. Rodgers: They hardly ever say, well this is fun. Let's watch hurt. Let's watch your suffer. Either scenario here is not good.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm going to push back, I'm going to play devil's advocate, Let's just say for instance, it is true. The reason why he didn't tell anybody is that he is a very private individual. So for instance, over this past weekend before we recorded, the New York Times ran a huge article about Secretary Austin being a very private person. And like very many prominent black men in the military, they learned to be private, about their lives, about their medical conditions, et cetera. Because they don't want to draw attention to themselves, because it increases the likelihood they would be discriminated against. Let's say all that's true. The problem with this is, he agreed to take a position. The Secretary of Defense.
N. Rodgers: Is under spotlight.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, whether good or bad.
J. Aughenbaugh: You no longer have privacy. I know we probably do this too much on this podcast, but Nia, do you remember this West Wing episode where Bartlett hides the fact that for most of his first term in office, nobody knew he had MS? I remember there was a scene where he tells Leo the reason why he never publicly disclosed it was that he didn't want to lose the opportunity to be president. Now, the very human reason that Bartlett expressed resonated with me. You're this close to becoming President of the United States. You don't want that opportunity taken away. But the problem is, we've vest so much into these positions that the public has to know, who you are, what are your talents, skills and abilities, and whether or not you can do the job. If you physically can't do the job, we need to know this. That's part and parcel of being in a democracy. Particularly because we vest so much authority in the Secretary of Defense.
N. Rodgers: For me, this falls into the category of actors and Paparazzi. You want to be known, you want your face to be on billboards around the world. You want to win Oscars. You want millions of people to have seen your films, but you don't want anybody to take a picture on you. That's not a caer. Now, I get that you don't want people to take a picture of you oh, I don't know, naked in your bathroom, doing your business or whatever.
J. Aughenbaugh: You know.
N. Rodgers: You have the right to that level of privacy. But when you go out of your house, and you go out into the public streets, you can't really be surprised that people are going to take your picture, especially if you're George Clooney. You're just that well known. I would think that after a while, you would learn to build that into your lifestyle. There is a certain amount of, well, you did choose to be secretary. If you wanted a level of privacy, you could have been in the secretary's counsel, but not the actual secretary. Do you know what I mean? You could have been a senior advisor, but you wanted that job. Because you thought you would be good at it. Thus far, he seems to have been fine at it. It's a weird thing, I don't know. It was weird to us and we wanted to bring it up and mention it to people like, wow, that's weird and to say, that the entirety of democracy is built on accountability and transparency.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That you cannot have a democracy without that. Trust us, we're acting in your best interest. If you start any sentence with trust us, I'm done. Because I'm Gen X and we don't trust anybody. We're just born cynical. I don't like the idea. I'm put off not because Secretary Austin is in any way not a good person. I'm certain he's a very good person. But I'm put off by this idea of I get to decide what you get to know. No, not in these kinds of jobs, you don't. I get to know whatever I want to know.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because again, we have a system that's predicated on the bureaucracy being given a lot of authority and a lot of discretion to act because we are told they are experts, that they will make sound judgments.
N. Rodgers: This doesn't look like a sound judgment. You've called into question for the rest of us.
J. Aughenbaugh: Your decision making ability-
N. Rodgers: Thank you. That's what I was looking for. I was looking for that phrase. Thank you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because again, Nia, to your point, this is the behavior that adds fuel to the fire for those who are already predisposed to distrust the government.
N. Rodgers: Why didn't he just write, I'm going off for a deep state meeting, on his website or whatever like. Because now, it's going to be he was replaced at Walter Reed with a look alike. That's not even really him anymore. You know what I mean. Because if you give an inch to the people who are already a little bit outside the normal thinking, they're going to run a mile in that direction. Well, he was actually meeting with lizard people in the center of the Earth and they control the world. It's just like, dude, why would you open yourself up to this when all you had to do was say, I'm going to take a temporary leave of absence for a couple of weeks. I'll be back when I feel better. There's nothing wrong with taking sick time. Hello. If you're not well, that's why we have sick time in the world.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: There are a lot of jobs where they don't have that's unfortunate. I feel bad for those people cause I'm very lucky that the University says, I bet Nia is going to get sick every once in a while. We should probably just bank up some time for that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I'm very lucky to have that job. He has that job. He has sick time, the government has sick leave. He's a GS-9,000 or whatever it is. I don't know what the level and what the GS level is for secretary. It's the highest. Sorry, GS is Government Services. It's the way that government employees are ranked. You go from GS1 to GS, whatever the secretaries are, which is, I'm sure, or the President, the highest GS level you can be.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's the reason why you have deputy secretaries. If the Biden administration claimed in front of some committee in the Senate that Kathleen Hicks, was qualified to be deputy Secretary, then, this is one of those situations to where she should step in and allow her boss to get the recovery he needs for the surgery in the post operative infection that he ended up contracting.
N. Rodgers: Well, and the reason we have that whole system is because we understand that people are human.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: There is not insignificant chance that if Joe Biden caught something terrible like the measles, he would be down for a couple of weeks and the acting President of the United States would be Kamala Harris.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Which is why you have to think about the entire ticket when you vote. Because we have these plans inside plans. What are we going to do if this person is not permanently incapacitated? We know that people get over the measles. But we need them to not be doing anything for the next couple of weeks. Well, that's why we have a Counsel and Vice President, and Speaker of the House, and whoever else we need. It's crazy. Just as a side note, what if he had been on the rotation of people who aren't allowed to leave Washington? Who aren't allowed to leave Washington, because when they all go away together, if there's an accident then one person left behind. They always leave a secretary behind.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's like during the State of the Union address where you have the President, the cabinet officials in both Houses of Congress, you set people aside just in case.
N. Rodgers: In case there's a bomb, or whatever.
J. Aughenbaugh: Something catastrophic happens.
N. Rodgers: Redundancy.
J. Aughenbaugh: The redundancy here is in place for reason.
N. Rodgers: Not just because paranoid Homeland security emergency preparedness planners. Which I don't know. To wrap up if you're not familiar, there's nothing wrong with Secretary Austin becoming ill. There's nothing wrong with him going to the hospital and receiving medical treatment. I'm glad he went to Walter Reed as a veteran and he got good treatment at Walter Reeds as far as we know. I'm happy for him about that. What he should have done? Was hand over the office to someone else's acting and then when he got better taking it back. Nobody thinks that if they hand over an office, they're not going to be able to get it back. Especially if they hand it over publicly. Then the person's kind of obligated to give it back. I don't know, not done well. We are crabby because it was not done well and we would like to see more transparency, not less.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. This is the silly mistake that just drives me nuts.
N. Rodgers: Do they call this an unforced error error? Isn't that what they call it? When you turn around and run towards your own.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Goal posts or whatever.
J. Aughenbaugh: Is somebody who's participated in team sports four years and who has coached him. Making an error because you're not physically as good as your opponent, that's one thing. But when you make a silly unforced error, this drives your teammates nuts, this drives your coaches nuts, and it just drives people. Again, for our long term listeners, Nia and I are generally supportive of the government.
N. Rodgers: This was a good move.
J. Aughenbaugh: We want the government to succeed, that when there's an unforced error, you're just like, really guys?
N. Rodgers: Really? Come on. We're down here telling people y'all are working hard and y'all a just working stupid.
J. Aughenbaugh: On that silly note. Thanks Nia.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, Aughie.
You've been listening to civil discourse brought to you by VCU Libraries. Opinions expressed are solely the speaker's own and do not reflect the views or opinions of VCU or VCU Libraries. Special thanks to the Workshop for technical assistance. Music by Isaak Hopson. Find more information at guides.library.vcu.edu/discourse. As always, no documents were harmed in the making of this podcast.