Rusty Downes--Authentic American Hero

September 2005 By Denny Hatch

multipage

I was once invited to speak at a meeting of the Chicago magazine circulation people that was held in a private dining room at Arlington Park overlooking the track. I cooked up a talk that equated the rules of picking Horses to the rules of picking winning direct-marketing promotions. When you think about it, the rules are exactly the same. But that's another column.

Rusty Downes Finds Someone to Blame

Downes, 65, has been starting races for 35 years.

What did he say about starting a race when all the horses were not in the gate?

"I blew it. It's my own fault," Downes told Craig Donnelly of the Philadelphia Inquirer. "I just made a mistake, but it doesn't make the pain any less. There was a lot of crowd noise, and I just didn't see the horse. It was the first time I ever did that in all those years."

Holy smoke!

A guy screwed up and admitted it!

This is a HUGE story!

If Only Somebody Would Say, "I Blew It"

Peggy and I and the editorial team first conceived Business Common Sense in January 2005. Since then I started reading three papers a day in hard copy and another 12 on the Internet, plus news and business magazines and news services. And, of course, as a news junkie, I watch a lot of TV.

I download anywhere from 10 to 40 stories a day to be indexed and cross-indexed in my massive computer files. I probably have archived 7,500 stories since the first of the year.

Many of the articles are about screw-ups.

Let's face it: Things that go smoothly are boring.

Philadelphia's gravelly voiced Mayor (now Pennsylvania Governor) Ed Rendell once got testy with reporters over what he considered some muckraking and unfair coverage. "You guys never cover airplane landings," he snarled.

In those 7,500 stories--many of them about screw-ups--Rusty Downes is the only guy who said, "I blew it."

Given Americans' apparent fear of admitting error, it is amazing to me that Ticonderoga still makes pencils with an eraser on one end.

"Brownie, You're Doing a Heck of a Job!"

Michael Brown of FEMA is a classic example of cronyism. In the words of Brett Arends of BostonHerald.com:

The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows.

And before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a deputy director in 2001, GOP activist Brown had no significant experience that would have qualified him for the position.

The Oklahoman got the job through an old college friend who at the time was heading up FEMA.

Did Brown admit that he misjudged the power of Katrina and came late to the party? No. Instead he castigated the people of New Orleans--those who had no car, no money and no place to go--for not evacuating the city when ordered to do so.

Did George W. Bush admit that he made a mistake in appointing the bumbling Brown head of FEMA? No. He turned to the former horse show entrepreneur in the middle of Katrina carnage and said, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of job."

Mercifully, someone saw the light and sent Brownie packing from Louisiana to Washington, D.C., and put a professional in charge.

Abandoning the Powell Doctrine

Colin Powell's philosophy was forged in the crucible of Vietnam. Historian Doug DuBrin summed up the Powell Doctrine in 76 words:

Essentially, the Doctrine expresses that military action should be used only as a last resort and only if there is a clear risk to national security by the intended target; the force, when used, should be overwhelming and disproportionate to the force used by the enemy; there must be strong support for the campaign by the general public; and there must be a clear exit strategy from the conflict in which the military is engaged.

Instead of going into Iraq with 400,000 troops, we went in with 130,000. When Baghdad fell, not enough troops were in place to stop the widespread looting. The message to the Iraqis: Lawlessness under the Americans is okay. The result: Our brave men and women--and thousands of Iraqis and foreign nationals--are being massacred daily in a manner equivalent to the Chinese torture of "death by a thousand cuts."

Has anyone in the Pentagon--from Rummy down--admitted that going into Iraq on the cheap may have been an error?

Abu Ghraib

Who took the fall for the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib? Not the guys in charge--Generals Miller, Sanchez, Abizaid--nor Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. They did nothing wrong. It was the fault, they assured Congress and the media, of a few rogue noncoms in a reserve military police battalion and their inept boss, an Army Reserve brigadier general named Janice Karpinski. Her unit--normally in the business of directing traffic and hauling drunks out of bars and propping them up in reveille formations--was suddenly put in charge of managing a vastly overcrowded prison filled with everything from hard-core terrorists to Iraqis rounded up in error. Like Michael Brown, General Karpinski--and people under her command--had no training and no experience in the job they were ordered to do.

Bill Clinton

The Monica Lewinsky scandal destroyed Bill Clinton's presidency. Clinton went on international TV and lied to the media, lied to the people, lied to the prosecutors, and lied to cabinet officers Donna Shalala and Madelyn Albright who, in turn, went out and unknowingly lied to the media in his behalf. My wife, Peggy, says impeachment need not have happened. Imagine if Clinton had gone on Oprah and admitted that he was a sex addict, and he was undergoing psychological counseling to deal with the problem. Americans are a forgiving people. "Oh, he's a sex addict," they would say. "Of course. With counseling, he'll straighten himself out." End of story.

Richard Nixon

Watergate is the classic lie built on a lie wrapped in a lie. Shortly before he died, Lyndon Johnson learned the name of White House operative E. Howard Hunt was found in the notebook of Watergate burglar Bernard Barker. "This thing has a long fuse," Johnson rightly predicted. Instead of firing his staffers responsible for the "Plumbers" and the break-in, Nixon allowed a vast cover-up to take place. When finally pushed to fire henchmen John Erlichman and H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, Nixon called them "two of the finest public servants it has been my privilege to know." On Aug. 8, 1974, Nixon resigned, telling the American people that "it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that effort [remaining in office]." Finally, in May 1977, Nixon admitted to David Frost in a televised interview, "I let the American people down." Had Nixon admitted he had a problem and cleaned house the day after Hunt's name was found in Barker's book, he would have completed his term.

Three Cheers for Russell "Rusty" Downes

In the great scheme of things, leaving a horse behind the starting gate is forgettable.

What should not be forgotten is that the man who committed the gaffe did not try to blame the jockey or blame the horse or blame the roustabouts who shove the horses into the starting gate.

Rusty Downes was one man in a million who had the guts to say, "I blew it. It was my own fault."

It's a damn shame American society has come to this, but in my book, Rusty Downes is a hero.

P.S. A Note About the Horse

Private Gift is a 3-year-old filly (female) with very respectable lifetime earnings of $102,155. On June 16, 2005, she won at Churchill Downs and on Aug. 10, 2005, placed second in a race at Saratoga. On Sept. 5, 2005, she was left behind the starting gate in the $100,000 Pennsylvania Oaks at Philadelphia Park, thus denied a chance to win her first stakes race. This past Sunday, Private Gift went off as the favorite in the ninth race at Monmouth, N.J., the 1 mile 70 yards Without Feathers Stakes with a purse of $60,000. Alas, she finished fifth in a field of six.

Takeaway Points to Consider

• If you screw up--and everybody screws up at some point--admit it and get on with your life.
  
  
• It's the cover-up that gets people in deep trouble, not the original error. Just ask Martha Stewart.
  
  
• "The buck stops here." --Sign on Harry Truman's Oval Office desk.

Letters to the Editor

These letters are in response to "The Passing of William Rehnquist," which was published on Sept. 8, 2005:

Hi Denny! I have become a "Business Common Sense" junkie!! And today is one of your very best!

--Diane March, with Donnelley Marketing

Great column today. I agree with everything you wrote. However, I think you may have overlooked one element in your story. You kept referring to management pandering to Wall Street, but I think it's important to recognize and realize that "Wall Street" represents the stockholders--the owners of these companies. And while I agree that no one seems to be exercising prudence, it is after all their (the stockholders') company. And if you really want to address the responsible parties to whatever corporate malfeasance or decisions not in the best interest of the customers, employees or the company itself--I think you need to place blame on the greed and self-serving short-sightedness of the shareholders. But if I've missed something, please explain. Thanks--and keep up the good work. I very much enjoy your editorials.

--Dan Vinal, with The WebPrez Company

Denny Hatch's Reply to Dan Vinal:

Thanks for writing. It seems to me that when Carl Icahn and his ilk start buying up stock--as he is doing with Time Warner--it is not for the benefit of the subscribers and employees. It is for the benefit of Carl Icahn. Do the stockholders benefit? Maybe in the short term. My family three and four generations back were Wall Street people. My great-grandfather was president of the New York Stock Exchange (see http://www.jackcorbett.com), and my grandfather had his own brokerage firm. When I was growing up, the family owned stocks--and bought stocks with the idea of putting them away, letting them grow, collecting dividends, etc. Today the stock market is a crapshoot. It has nothing to do with the actual value of a company but the PERCEIVED value of a company. This is, I believe, because of the manipulators who are more interested in the deal rather than the company. Thanks again for writing.

--D.H.

Thank you for the well-thought-out and accurate statements about our country's Constitution. I was amazed at how you were able to bring the heart of a company as well as a country down to its foundation. Thank you also for honoring the memory of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. May God bless you.

--Cindy Amend, with CTA, Inc.

You're a prophet. God bless you. A voice crying in the wilderness of amorality.

--Gifford Claiborne, with Claiborne Consulting

I appreciate reading your thoughts and business insight nuggets every week. However, I must object to your characterization of Justice Warren as a "flaming liberal." This betrays a certain mindset, which I would hope be left for discussions within one's one personal sphere, and not dispensed through a public forum. One could just as easily label the late Justice Renquist with an uncomplimentary appellation, as nearly 50 percent of this country would willingly do. Just a little something to keep in mind when considering the genius of our Founding Fathers and the brilliant design of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

--Lori Karman, with BJM Promotions

Denny Hatch's Reply to Lori Karman:

From Homework Help

http://home.comcast.net/~sharonday7/Presidents/AP060504.htm

E-mail: I need help with my Eisenhower project. Do you know Eisenhower's greatest blunder or failure while he was in office?

Reply: When a U-2 spy plane was downed over the Soviet Union, the Eisenhower administration at first denied that it was an American plane. The U-2 incident caused Soviet Premier Khruschev to abort a summit meeting with Eisenhower and was perhaps the first time Americans realized that their government lied. Eisenhower later said that his greatest regret as President was initially lying about the incident. In a 1962 interview with David Kraslow he said "I didn't realize how high a price we were going to have to pay for that lie." [USSR, U.S.S.R., Russia, espionage] Of course, that was only his greatest regret. "The biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made" he once said was his choice of Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He had chosen Warren for his "middle of the road philosophy," but Warren turned out to be very liberal in his approach to his new job. (Quoted from the Congressional Quarterly's The Supreme Court: Justice and the Law, 2nd ed., p.163.) [TBSC 5, 5n]

--D.H.

This letter is in response to "The Unforgiving Internet," which was which was published on Sept. 6, 2005.

Sleazy and dishonest abortion advocates?? I agree that any interested party in the pro- or anti-abortion debate should declare themselves. So, I'm for abortion, at any stage and for any reason. It seems specious to me to be so concerned for a few moments of pain that a fetus might feel, yet ignore the real pain and suffering so constant and evident everywhere in the world, especially among poor children. If it is somehow acceptable for political reasons to bomb cities and kill or maim tens or hundreds of thousands of people, many of them children, then where is the moral high ground anti-abortionists' claim? If you use the terms "sleazy" and "dishonest" to describe two researchers whose agenda may or may not have biased a scientific study, then what terms are left to describe a president, vice president, presidential advisor and defense secretary who invaded Iraq based on a serial "pack of lies"? No WMDs ... no ties to 9-11 or al Qaeda, and the very real likelihood that all that will replace a tyrant is a tyrannous theocracy. And by the way: "A boil that needed to be lanced"?? On what grounds do you or the highest officials in your country get to decide that? What about all the other malevolent boils in the world, some of whom are your declared allies? John Friesen, claiming the liberal-humanist high ground.

--John Friesen, with Blue Giant Media

Web Sites Related to Today's Edition

The Daily Racing Form

http://www.drf.com

Philadelphia Park

http://www.philadelphiapark.com