The Appearance of Impropriety
by Peter Morgan, Glenn Reynolds
I haven't read this book. I don't own it. But the reviews point out the interesting argument it makes.
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Amazon.com
One of the longest-lasting residues of Watergate is the vetting industry: a mountain of regulations, committees, consultants, and special prosecutors dedicated to detecting and/or eradicating something called the appearance of impropriety. But for all this effort, it's hardly true that people in government and business are more ethical than they used to be. That disconnection is the point of departure for this book. The problem that Peter Morgan and Glenn Reynolds address is that the notion that all this energy is directed toward--the appearance of impropriety--is horribly obscure (Is it a conflict of interest, Michael Kinsley once wondered, to have a second child?). It's also subject to political whims and fads and, most important, not all that connected to what we should really be bearing down on: actual impropriety. This is a lively, opinionated read that makes excellent use of learned historical and literary contexts to cast convincing doubt on the current conventions of public morality.
Chris Lehmann, In These Times
This briskly argued polemic dissects a key paradox that should be obvious to anyoen following the debauchery of our national political life over the past two decades: As ethics bureaucracies (and independent counsels) continue to proliferate, the quality of public morality deteriorates. In an ethics culture governed by appearances rather than substance, no one is ever held clearly accountable for anything.
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