Anti-Climacus

QUOTE:

Harvey Pitt (the SEC Chairman) was a disaster on Meet the Press yesterday. To wit:

" Sitting back in his seat with a somewhat sleepy look on his face, Pitt tried to convince Russert--and the viewing public--that he was serious about fighting corporate fraud. "I'm the right person for the job," Pitt said in explaining why he would not resign, "and the American public expects me to be there pitching in for them and making sure that they get a fair deal." He argued that the legal work he did in the past for the Big Five accounting firms, brokerage houses, and major corporations did not mean that he could not do his job as SEC chairman--even though Pitt's had to recuse himself from 10 percent of the cases the SEC has heard during his first year in the post: "I represented people when I was in private practice. I gave that up a very long time ago to represent the American public. This guilt by occupation is really a needless diversion." And Pitt tried to turn the tables on the politicians who have called for his resignation, employing one of their own favorite tricks: "I'm not going to listen to the politicians. I'm going to listen to Donna from California, who told me that she and her husband lost a third of their retirement."

None of these defenses were particularly stirring. But perhaps the most telling moment came when Russert asked Pitt, who had just defended President Bush's conduct as a director of Harken Energy back in the early '90s, whether that sort of "passionate" defense of the president would "affect people's view of you as totally independent." Pitt replied, "I'm not passionate in defending anyone"--which couldn't have been much comfort to the American public he's supposed to be defending."