39. Integrity comes down to the answer “I can’t do that”
One measure of integrity is the question of what a person would never do. If everything is negotiable, ultimately you do not stand for anything. Saying no is more than doing nothing: saying no means saying yes to what you stand for. SPs should have arguments for what they will not do, and ultimately they themselves will be the argument.
SPs with integrity, as we saw in the previous chapter, must be faithful, meaning persevering for the causes they stand for. This perseverance lies in their persistence and strength of will to achieve what they want or have to achieve. This faithfulness means not only doing what they must, but also refraining from doing what they should not do. One measure of integrity is the question of what people refrain from doing, or better put, what they would never do. As Melham Waken put it, integrity comes down to the answer, “I can’t do that.”206
“I can’t do that” does not mean lacking the courage but rather having the courage to refuse. If everything is negotiable, in the end we stand for nothing; if every principle can be overruled, we are unprincipled. So integrity is a matter of standing for something that cannot be tampered with, renegotiated, or affected by others. Integrity consists in setting the bottom line and sticking to it.
An example of someone showing backbone was US president Harry Truman. Douglas MacArthur, general of the US army at the time, caused an obstruction by publicly calling for a new US politics of conflict management. Truman was advised not to dismiss MacArthur due to his popularity, but decided to do so. “The time had come to draw the line,” he stated in his memoires.207 Insubordination undermines the president’s authority as commander-in-chief of the army and with it the principle that civilians have a say over the army in a democracy. Truman was not prepared to bargain on this, despite the dismissal negatively affecting his last year and a half in office.208
So integrity is revealed in the moments when we draw the line with the words, “this far and no further”, or as Margaret Thatcher expressed it, “You turn if you want to. The lady is not for turning.”209 Such moments show what a person stands for. By saying “I can’t do that,” you reveal non-negotiable aspects of your own nature: “It goes against everything I stand for”, “I can’t get behind that”, “I can’t convince myself to do it”, “If I do this I’ll be morally bankrupt.” In such situations we show independent character. US president Theodore Roosevelt stated that such character is of essential importance: “Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.”210 In this respect saying no is different from doing nothing. It is saying yes to what you stand for.
Ideally we should have arguments to support not being able or willing to act, but the more there is at stake the more it touches people personally, reaching the core of what they stand for, making it harder to explain. At a certain point we have to stop looking for reasons, because we are the reasons ourselves: “There are no words for it. It’s just how I am.”
Saying no, incidentally, should not be made more difficult than it has to be. Saying no is often difficult because people first say yes or do not speak out. The more often and the longer people say yes or remain silent, the harder it is to say no later. The more often and consistently people behave, the easier it is to remain consistent and the harder it is to be inconsistent, so saying no is easier if you consistently say no. As a minister of finance was advised by his predecessor, “Finance minister is the easiest job in the world. All you have to do is say no, and there is only one thing you have to say yes to. That’s when they ask you, ‘did you say no?’”211