Loyalty

Richard Cohen wonders why ex-Surgeon General Richard Carmona didn't just quit. I wonder, too:

In his own way, Carmona is the poster boy for the Bush administration -- a low-level Colin Powell, another non-quitter, a saluter who went along with the program and now talks more in defense of his own reputation than he ever spoke as an internal critic or, more likely, secret doubter. Such loyalty -- not to principle, conscience or integrity but to the boss -- is as much an essential ingredient for failure as are incorrect intelligence reports or fervid ideology. What Carmona and others like him too often forget is that when it comes to loyalty, they owe it not to the president but to you and me. Last time I looked, we were still the boss.

It's very strange times we've been living through.