Unmaking the Presidency by Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes

This is a book written by lawyers. Sometimes that’s a bad thing, but in this case it is a very good thing, as it really takes a pair of lawyers like Hennessey and Wittes to carve out the controlling language of what the American presidency has been and what it may be becoming.

Let’s start here, with what I take to be their central thesis:

Most of all, Trump proposes a presidency that elevates the expressive and personal dimensions of the office over everything else. It is one in which the institutional office and the personality of the occupant are almost entirely merged -- merged in their interests, in their impulses, in their finances, and in their public character. In elevating the expressive, vanity-plate dimensions of the office and making it a personal vehicle for the public self-expression of the officeholder, he proposes sublimating nearly all other traditional features of the presidency: its management functions; its expectation of good-faith execution of law; its expectation of ethical conduct, truthfulness, and service. This vision of the presidency thus unsurprisingly produces a genuinely novel set of deployments of the executive’s traditional powers, ones that are profoundly different from those of prior presidents.

Arthur Schlesinger wrote about the rise of the Imperial Presidency. Hennessey and Wittes are writing about the rise of the Expressive Presidency. A presidency that is dedicated not to “faithfully executing” the powers of the office, but to using those powers to support and express the person holding the office. It’s a very different world than the one we’re used to.

The Oath

And the troubles begin at the very beginning -- on inauguration day when this new expressive president takes the oath of office.

The political scientist Edward Corwin, in his book ‘The President: Office and Powers, 1787-1984,’ described the coronation oath of the English kings “from which the President’s oath is lineally descended,” saying that “its purpose, definitely, was to put the King’s conscience in bonds to the law.” The early constitutional treatise writer Justice Joseph Story considered the purpose of the oath so obvious that he began his one-paragraph discussion of it by saying that there “is little need of commentary upon this clause” because “no man can well doubt the propriety of placing a president of the United States under to most solemn obligations to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution.” Story described the oath as actively cultivating virtue in a president, “creat[ing] upon his conscience a deep sense of duty, but an appeal, at once in the presence of God and man, to the most sacred and solemn sanctions, which can operate upon the human mind.”

In a recent law review article about the original meaning of the oath and the take care clause, the legal scholars Andrew Kent, Ethan Leib, and Jed Shugerman note that the promise of faithful execution in the clauses was commonly associated at the time of the founding with “true, honest, diligent, due, skillful, careful, good faith, and impartial execution of the law or office.” The oath, they write, is thus a promise on the part of presidents “to exercise their power only when it is motivated in the public interest rather than in their private self-interest, consistent with fiduciary obligation in the private law.”

This is all important background to the essential point of the authors in this section.

The problem is that the oath works only when the president actually means it. It instills a sense of duty only when the oath’s words and the solemn occasion of its delivery matters to the president and when others recognize that he means it. What if the person swearing is the sort of person who cannot credibly swear an oath?

More to the point -- did Trump “mean it” when he took this oath? The authors take us back to that inauguration day in 2017, and provide us with plenty of doubt that not only didn’t he, but that he probably couldn’t.

Return for a moment to the strange scene on the dais at Trump’s inauguration. Even in this unusually fractured period of American politics, the day offered a rare show of bipartisanship: Democrats and Republicans sat there united both in their shared commitment to the peaceful transition of power and -- we suspect, but cannot prove -- also in a profound unease about the man who raised his right hand before them. It’s true that around the country, tens of millions of Trump voters delighted in his inauguration. But there was still an undeniable anxiety etched on the faces of many people on that dais about whether this was a man capable of solemnly swearing anything, let alone swearing to “faithfully execute” something like the office of the presidency. It wasn’t just the Democrats. House Speaker Paul Ryan managed a weak smile but tightly gripped the arm of his wife, Janna. Past him, Senator John Cornyn and Representative Kevin McCarthy, both of whom should have been witnessing a moment of Republican triumph, gazed on somberly. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell frowned, even more than usual, and appeared to wish he were anywhere else.

Pinning down the precise defect in Trump’s oath is impossible. Indeed, the claim that there is a defect is inherently unprovable. One cannot know what was in Trump’s heart as he said the words the Constitution prescribes. No public opinion experts polled anyone on public faith in President Trump’s oath. Very few of the many Americans who fear or hate Trump frame their suspicions, either intellectually or emotionally, in terms of doubt as to the integrity of his oath.

Moreover, the history of hating a president, and of suspecting his illegitimacy in office, is old. A great many voters -- including Trump himself -- harbored deep enough questions about Obama’s legitimacy to doubt his American birth. Many Democrats did not believe that George W. Bush was legitimate in office because he had prevailed in the 2000 election only after the intervention of the Supreme Court. And that contested election, in turn, reran aspects of the earlier contested election of 1876 between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden -- one that left a mark of illegitimacy on Hayes’s presidency. Most famously, it was an earlier presidential election and impending inauguration that triggered the South’s secession from the Union in 1861.

The defect in Trump’s oath was certainly not technical. Presidents have flubbed their oaths before. Herbert Hoover swore to “maintain” the Constitution rather than protect it; Nixon inserted an “and” that didn’t belong. At Obama’s first inauguration, Chief Justice Roberts fumbled his role, resulting in the new president swearing to “execute faithfully” rather than “faithfully execute” the office; the fastidious Roberts re-administered the oath the next day to be safe. For his part, Trump said all the right words -- prompted by the chief justice, surrounded by his family, congressional leadership, and justices of the Supreme Court -- and he did so without faltering or ad-libbing. He shook Obama’s hand afterward, as one would expect. He observed all the niceties. Yet an unformed question tugged at the back of millions of minds even as he did so: Is this a man capable of being faithful to anything? Does he even know what it means to preserve, protect, and defend something other than himself?

The authors don’t think so, and neither do I, and they go on to cite example after example of people in Trump’s inner orbit not trusting him at his word, of documenting their interactions with him in order to preserve a true record of their encounters, rather than what Trump would inevitable say about them later.

The sense of something being wrong was, we submit, rooted in what James Comey would later call “the nature of the person.” Comey would use this phrase before the Senate Intelligence Committee in an attempt to explain why he had felt compelled to memorialize his first interaction with Trump in writing. Senator Mark Warner asked Comey what it was about the interaction with the president-elect that made him so keen to write down the details right away, typing the memo out on a laptop in an FBI car as he was being driven away from Trump Tower. Comey’s response is worth considering in relation to the oath Trump would swear two weeks after their meeting:

“I was alone with the president of the United States, or the president-elect, soon to be president … I was talking about matters that touch on the FBI’s core responsibility, and that relate to the president, president-elect personally. And then the nature of the person. I was honestly concerned he might lie about the nature of our meeting, and so I thought it really important to document.”

Consider Comey’s invocation of “the nature of the person.” He means, of course, that Trump is the sort of person one does not trust. And Comey was not alone. In the days following Comey’s firing, his successor -- Andrew McCabe -- also memorialized his conversations with Trump, later writing that he “wrote memos about my interactions with President Trump for the same reason that Comey did: to have a contemporaneous record of conversation with a person who cannot be trusted.” It matters if a person swearing the presidential oath is so lacking in civic virtue and trustworthiness that an officer of the government feels compelled to document conversations with him -- and that the desirability of doing so is so self-explanatory that it can be justified by a mere reference to “the nature of the person” with whom he is dealing.

All of this, to my way of thinking, invites a larger question that the authors never fully address. If the “nature of the person” who is the president can prevent that person from taking the oath of office in good faith -- and more pointedly, if everyone recognizes that this expressive president is exactly that kind of person -- then can that person actually BE the president of the United States? Constitutionally speaking, of course, Donald Trump was the president of the United States. The Electoral College took care of that. But if he didn’t mean it when he said the words of the oath of office, as a matter of legal philosophy, did the office of the presidency actually reside in him?

There are so many problems that stem from this initial premise regarding the oath of office. Much later in the book, when the authors are talking about Trump’s giving security clearance to his son-in-law Jared Kushner, despite Kushner’s inability to pass the necessary background checks, they make this observation.

Then, suddenly, in May 2018, Kushner was granted a full top secret clearance. Everything was aboveboard, the White House insisted. Sources “familiar with the matter” made a point of telling the major papers that the permanent clearance was “granted by career White House and intelligence officials after the completion of his FBI background check.” These sources even pointed to the observance of this rigid process as vindication, evidence that Kushner was no longer any kind of focus of the special counsel’s investigation and that it should clear any suspicion regarding his conduct. Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, underscored the point in a statement that Kushner’s “application was properly submitted, reviewed by numerous career officials and underwent the normal process.”

But none of that was true. The process hadn’t cleared Kushner; it had concluded that he posed too great a threat. It took nearly a year before the public learned not only that Trump had personally intervened -- in the face of contrary recommendations at the highest levels -- to order that Kushner be given a clearance but also that the administration had been lying to the public about it ever since. The administration’s response? Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway went on Fox News and declared that while the White House wouldn’t discuss security clearances, “I will tell you the president has the absolute right to do what was described.”

It was the equivalent of a child’s taunt, but Conway was at some level correct. Just as he’d been able to pardon Arpaio, just as he had the power to take away Brennan’s clearance, the president did have the authority to overrule his own staff and the intelligence community to grant his son-in-law access to the nation’s most consequential secrets. For that matter, he also has an absolute right to give a security clearance to Kim Jong Un or Chinese leader Xi Jinping or Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran if he feels so inclined. What went unaddressed in Conway’s response is that “can” is not the same as “should,” though the only mechanism the founders had for distinguishing between the two -- the oath of office -- has to be felt as a burden by the president in order to do its work of distinguishing. If the president doesn’t feel some difference between self-dealing and working on behalf of the public interest, if she experiences her powers as monarchical prerogatives there for personal grandeur and benefit, the distinction between what she may do and what she ought to do becomes one without meaningful difference.

See how dangerous this idea of a president “not meaning it” when he takes the oath of office can be? In a world in which the president makes no distinction between what is good for him and what is good for the country -- there is no power in the world that can stop him from acting. Again, I ask, can such a person actually BE the president of the United States?

Bad At His Job

But put that idea aside for the moment. It’s probably too esoteric to even make basic sense. There were many other things wrong with the expressive nature of this president -- and one of the most fundamental was that it made him simply bad at the job of being president. As an expressive president, Trump acted like authority and execution resided entirely with him, rarely, if ever, coordinating his decisions and actions with the vast bureaucracy he had at his command. The authors illustrate this in their description of Trump’s “Muslim travel ban,” an action he tried to take very early in his presidency designed to prevent people from certain countries from entering the United States.

The chaos the travel ban unleashed outside the administration reflected a certain chaos within the administration that had produced it. Normally, a major presidential action in the national security realm that affects the lives of millions of people and the security of the country at large involves a complex process within the government. An action like the travel ban affects many different agencies with different interests. The Department of Homeland Security mans the ports of entry. The State Department issues visas and has to respond to the diplomatic fallout from countries that don’t want their citizens banned from entering the United States -- not to mention the negative backlash from Muslim countries that perceive such an action as discriminatory with respect to Islam. One would expect consultation with the intelligence agencies as to whether a ban is even necessary -- and, if so, how broadly it should sweep, against which countries it should be directed, and on what sort of people it should focus. If the goal is to protect national security, one would presumably want to hear from the folks who have insight into which kinds of people do and do not pose threats to national security. It turned out that the military had important dogs in this fight too: people who had helped U.S. forces in Iraq, to whom the military had promised shelter, were suddenly barred from entering the country. And, of course, the Justice Department has to consider the legality of any major federal action to make sure it can survive the legal challenges that have to be anticipated.

This is all entirely reasonable -- especially if a president wants to actually do things successfully. And it is really what the executive branch is designed to do.

This sort of complex integration of different governmental entities is why the executive branch developed the so-called interagency process, a system of coordination and discussion between the federal agencies, at escalating levels of authority, designed to unify and deconflict policy and make sure all of the different agencies’ concerns are accounted for and addressed. The goal is ultimately to tee up policy decisions for a president adequately informed of the costs and benefits of different courses -- and, in order to preserve presidential time and focus, to resolve matters between agencies that do not require presidential involvement at lower levels.

Process is hard to love. It slows things down. It is frustrating to people who want action. No one votes for process. All presidents have chafed at and sidestepped it to some degree. But all presidents have been forced to rely on it too. This is because the executive branch is, in reality, a network of giant bureaucracies, not just a person who wants to express herself. 

Let’s just stop there for emphasis. The executive branch IS a network of bureaucracies, not just a person. Trump, of course, called those bureaucracies the “deep state,” and complained about how it was working against him. But he and them were part of the same thing, both essential parts of the executive branch. After all…

Some kind of system has to make sure that these bureaucracies are not working at cross-purposes and that the president gets the information she needs in order to act wisely. In the preparation of the travel ban, there was as little process as the modern presidency has seen on a major decision. Consultation with the Justice Department was limited to a facial review of the order’s text for obvious illegality. The Homeland Security Department was briefed only shortly before the ban was released. Neother the military nor the intelligence community was meaningfully consulted.

If the president had consulted with those agencies, the executive order would have looked quite different. It would have applied to fewer groups of people for shorter periods of time; its language would have been cleansed of the lingering hints of racial and religious animus; and it would have contained safety valves in the forms of carve-outs and discretionary exemptions. In other words, it would have been less like what Trump said he wanted: “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” For many of the president’s supporters, this would have been far less satisfying, and they surely would have viewed such an outcome as the kind of business-as-usual watering down of campaign promises delivered by regular politicians. They didn’t want that.

No, they didn’t. But they, like Trump, didn’t get what they wanted. And they didn’t get it because this expressive president worked outside the system, forcing his expressive will and his expressive will only into the process. As the authors note:

The irony is that Trump regularly pays a huge price for this vision of the presidency. Mostly it’s a price in effectiveness. The travel ban debacle turned out to be a kind of template. Time after time, traditional processes have simply vanished, to the detriment of the administration’s ability to carry out the president’s own objectives in a timely, efficient, and coherent manner.

Set aside whether what Trump wanted to do was a good thing or a bad thing. As a practical matter, he wasn’t able to execute on his own objectives -- and that made him bad at his job.

The Deep State

In this regard, the “deep state” was a real thing -- as there were officials in a number of executive branch departments who came to work at cross purposes with President Trump, who, in a number of high-profile Twitter battles, became frequently referred to as the “toddler-in-chief.”

But a funny thing happened on the way to a restoration of the Hamiltonian presidency in Trump’s image (i.e., that of the unitary executive): the executive branch’s unity dissolved visibly before the public’s eye. And as the toddler-in-chief thread showed, in important respects, the president ceased to be at the helm of the executive branch and instead became its mascot. Trump was proposing such a massive and radical change that the rest of the executive branch could not simply continue with business as usual; it had to adapt -- and resist. Its response was in equal parts understandable and destructive of important constitutional norms.

Trump’s supporters were fairly outraged when the executive branch opposed the president -- after all, he is the president and represents the highest expression of executive authority that exists. But what is often overlooked is how dumb and counterfactual Trump’s executive mandates were.

The disuniting of the executive under Trump began immediately on his assumption of the presidency. Recall again that incident in which he was so incensed by the National Park Service crowd size retweet that on his first full day in office, he personally called the acting National Park Service director to demand that the agency produce photos to support Trump’s claim that his crowds were larger. Indeed, an “urgent directive” went to thousands of people at the U.S. Department of the Interior that “all bureaus and the department have been directed by incoming administration to shut down Twitter platforms immediately until further notice.” Despite the potential impact on emergency communications, officials were permitted to reactivate department Twitter accounts only once messages of atonement -- apologizing for the “accidental” retweet -- had been posted.

That’s right. Stop tweeting things I don’t like. This was the era when alternate, unofficial Twitter accounts were created so that “bureaucrats” could continue to communicate with the public matters important to their agency missions, despite the toddler-in-chief in the White House. I, myself, remember following the “alt-NPS” account for a while.

Ironically, it was not the apology or the discipling of the wayward agency that had a lasting impact. It was the defiance and contradiction of the president by subordinate officers who quickly stopped bothering to retract or to apologize when they strayed.

The Official Voice

Much of this behavior of the “wayward agencies” is attributable less to a conscious desire to thwart the president’s intentions and more to a befuddlement over exactly what the president’s intentions were.

A final exceptional feature of Trump’s rhetoric that operates in tandem with this media ecosystem is his mantra-like repetition of specific phrases -- “Witch Hunt,” “Make America Great Again,” “Build the Wall,” “No Collusion,” “No Obstruction,” “I have nothing to do with Russia,” “It’s a disgrace” -- both in tweets and in speeches, and specifically the repetition of these memes in lieu of argumentation. Trump never made or developed an argument against Robert Mueller’s investigation nor made a reasoned case against the suggestion that there was something untoward in his campaign’s relationship with Russian operatives, for example. He simply repeated key phrases and let others fill in the gaps. These phrases come to represent the terms of the argument that others -- Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Mark Meadows, and Jim Jordan, for example -- will make in his place. Trump himself, instead of making the argument, simply announces the articles of faith around which others have to navigate in building it. His political allies could then criticize Mueller however they wanted and develop the argument against the prosecutor in any number of fashions, as long as they hit -- or at least didn’t contradict -- these key points: Trump didn’t do anything wrong with respect to Russia, however things might appear; he didn’t corruptly seek to impede the investigation of his conduct; and the investigation against him was an unfair effort to damage him and his presidency.

In this environment, it is extremely difficult to understand what it is the president wants, as the “official voice” of his office is practically non-existent. There is a lot of discussion about whether this represents a conscious strategy on Trump’s part -- a clever ploy to keep his opponents off base and his options always open -- or whether this is reactive output of a disordered mind. The authors leave little doubt about what they think.

Indeed, Trump’s lies about intelligence are generally not of a strategic nature, designed to support some policy objective or conceal some short-term operation that publicity may put at risk. They are like his other lies -- self-serving matters of momentary convenience that may deny intelligence, make it up, or mischaracterize it. And they are often less about the intelligence itself than about the agencies responsible for it. When he tweets something that is plausible on its face but lacks public evidence to support, it is impossible to know if he is disclosing sensitive government information or if he just watched a segment on Fox & Friends. Moreover, his policy lies are generally not attempts to persuade the country to follow him on a particular policy course; they are more often simple self-promoting bluster.

On occasion, he has also lied about factual matters by way of creating space for his policies. One of the present authors spent a year litigating a Freedom of Information Act request in an attempt to prove false a single line about immigrants and terrorism and Justice Department statistics in Trump’s February 2017 speech to a joint session of Congress. The line was designed to gin up public fear of immigration and thus generate support for his travel ban executive order. But this sort of lie is actually the expectation, not the rule. Far more often, Trump’s lies serve no policy purpose. They are bloviating swagger and nothing else. In this sense, Trump not only depletes the reserve of trust and presumption of good faith in the presidency; he creates a presidency truly based on the Frankfurtian concept of bullshit. He is the politician of Swift’s precise description -- you “will find yourself equally deceived whether you believe or not.”

And that’s exactly the point. If you want people to take you seriously, or to understand you clearly, don’t lie to them. And when lies become understood as the bedrock of the “official voice” of the presidency, we are moving into very dangerous ground.

This is Trump’s radical proposed revision to the traditional presidency: not only that the president doesn’t need to be honest, but that he can be known to everyone as a “fucking liar” -- not an occasional liar, not a calculating liar, but a pervasive, constant liar and bullshitter on all subjects at all times. What would this revision mean in the long term for the presidency? In the broadest sense, nobody knows, because nobody knows how deeply such leadership will erode public confidence in the possibility of government -- indeed, to what extent it will erode public belief in objective truth itself. Presidents are, among other things, modelers of public beliefs and aspirations politically. Does having a president who is a bullshitter change the public’s sense of truth over time? The point of Trump’s lies is not to convince the public that he can be believed, but rather to convince people that no one can be believed.

I would make a minor quibble here. It is not the point of Trump’s lies, but rather the result -- since I don’t think that even this is a conscious strategy. And that’s partly what makes it so dangerous. Conscious strategy can be thwarted, can be resisted. But in doing what he does, and in us doing what we do in reaction, there is no consciousness, instead it is the subconscious interplay of the narcissist and his followers. It is part of the slippery slope toward despotism, and once begun, there is little that can be consciously done to retard its progress.

A Culture of Ethics

One other point that is worth illuminating on how the authors see Trump changing the very nature of the presidency.

A culture of ethics is a fragile thing. It begins with the law, but it doesn’t end there. The space the law leaves for self-dealing and graft, either by choice or because of the nature of the presidential office, is vast. And if the president makes a decision to exploit that space rather than prudentially protecting it -- to push every line rather than drawing lines that set confidence-building boundaries, to dare the public rather than reassuring the public -- the law will not substitute for political pushback as a remedy. The culture of ethics will decay. The decay begins at the head and spreads downward. If the president doesn’t actually divest, why should anyone else? If the president’s children aren’t punished for ethical violations, why shouldn’t others break the same rules with impunity? If cabinet officials keep their jobs despite scandals, why should those serving beneath them fear losing their own?

They’re talking here about Trump’s refusal to divest from his private business concerns and even to use the office of the presidency for his personal profit. Like so much of what Trump does -- he just does it, and no one seems to hold him accountable.

Thus far, Trump’s bet has paid off to an astonishing degree. Nobody has taken up his dares. Congress has done little, though it may be beginning to stir. The courts, limited by the slow pace of litigation and legitimate substantive and procedural legal barriers to action, offer little short-term relief. So far, anyway, the only real pushback has come from prosecutors and state attorneys general who have probed the conduct of his campaign and foundation. And it has come from a dogged and relentless press, which has accomplished a great deal of disclosure -- disclosure that, in turn, gives rise to the possibility of political response. As other billionaires eye the presidency, it’s not hard to imagine them following the example of minimal ethical compliance and preserving their business entanglements. Contrary to former OGE director Shaub’s admonition, as far as some very rich people were concerned, divestment has, in fact, been too high a price to pay for the presidency. Now, it seems, it doesn’t need to be paid after all. As Trump has set the presidency to protecting his personal business interests and dared the polity to stop him, the polity has responded with a shrug. Perhaps a disgusted shrug, but a shrug nonetheless.

The point about future billionaires now running for president because they no longer need to divest themselves of their businesses really hit home for me. That is not a world I want to live in.

The authors wrote in 2020 -- and now I am writing in 2024. And although Trump is facing a whole bevy of legal challenges and court cases -- none of them have anything to do with the way he used the office of the president for his private inurement. Future billionaires with presidential aspirations: take note.

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Boards That Make a Difference by John Carver

This post was originally published on a now-retired blog that I maintained from roughly 2005 to 2013. As a result, there may be some references that seem out of date. 

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I’ve heard a lot of people talk about “the Carver Model,” but never really knew what it was. Well, now I do, and I’d have to say I’m a pretty big fan. At least on the theory side of it. But how much of it is practical? I don't know, but why don’t I start by just trying to digest the 24 dogears I added as I went along?

In fact, the importance of the owners-to-board link is so great that the proper board job is best described as ownership one step down rather than management one step up. This concept alone completely changes the nature of governance.

That pretty well sums up Carver’s Policy Governance Model. The board is not a group of “super-managers,” it is a group of “mini-owners.” It does not manage anything. It determines what success looks like and holds the staff accountable for getting there.

Certain common practices are such obvious drains on board effectiveness that one does not need a sophisticated model to recognize them. Although some boards may avoid a few of the following conditions, rarely does any one board avoid them all.

Time spent on the trivial. Items of trivial scope or import receive disproportionate attention compared with matters of greater scope and importance. Richard J. Peckham, on joining a major public board in Kansas, found it so lost in trivia that “I thought I’d been banished to outer darkness.” Major program issues go unresolved while boards conscientiously grapple with some small detail. An Illinois school board proudly proclaimed the “active role the members of our board take in purchasing decisions…The administration [in replacing desks in two classrooms] was directed to select three chairs from different companies and have them available for the next board meeting. The board then made the decision on warranty, durability, price and color.” A national survey found that almost half of America’s school boards made the purchasing decisions for tape recorders, cameras, and television sets (National School Boards Association, n.d.). Little wonder that Chait, Holland, and Taylor (1996) claim, “Trustees are often little more than high-powered, well-intentioned people engaged in low level activities” (p. 1).

Short-term bias. The time horizon for board decisions is more distant than anywhere else in the organization. Yet we find boards dealing mainly with the near term and, even more bizarre, with the past. Last month’s financial statement gets more attention than the organization’s strategic position.

Reactive stance. Boards consistently find themselves reacting to staff initiatives rather than making decisions proactively. Proposals for staff action and recommendations for board action so often come from staff that some boards would cease to function if they were asked to create their own agenda.

Reviewing, rehashing, redoing. Some boards spend most of their time going over what their staff has already done. “Eighty-five percent of our time was spent monitoring staff work,” says Glendora Putnam, Boston, about a prominent national board. “We can’t afford that. We have too much wisdom to be put to use.” Just keeping up with a large staff can take prodigious hours and even then can never be done fully. But the salient point is that reviewing, rehashing, and redoing staff work—no matter how well—do not constitute leadership.

Leaky accountability. Boards often allow accountability to “leak” around the chief executive. Having established a CEO position, the board members continue to relate in their official capacities with other staff, either giving them directions or judging their performance, rather than allowing the CEO to do his or her job.

Diffuse authority. It is rare to find a board-executive partnership wherein each party’s authority has been clarified. Often, a vast gray area exists. When a matter lies in this uncertain area, the safe executive response is to take it to the board. Instead of using this opportunity to clarify to whom the decision belongs, the board simply approves or disapproves. The event has been settled, but the boundaries of authority remain as unclear as they were before.

Complete overload. Unless a board rubber-stamps decisions or just ignores issues, it is likely to be overwhelmed by a seemingly impossible job. The board just cannot get to everything and is likely to miss important red flags.

This is a great list of dangers to avoid.

In constructing a new wisdom of governance, I found it necessary to create categories to guide a board’s debate and pronouncements, groupings not derived from administration but from the nature of governance. These categories also serve as vessels to contain board policies as they accumulate, and thereby become divisions of the board policy manual. The categories embrace board policies about (1) ends to be achieved, (2) means (defined simply as non-ends) to be avoided, (3) the interface of board and management, and (4) the practice of governance itself.

A big part of the book is about these four areas of appropriate board action and policy setting. I like their elegance, but find the formal adherence advocated in the book a little unrealistic unless the whole model is willingly embraced by the board. Still, the can serve me as guideposts as I work with my board and help shape their agendas. Essentially, they should define (1) what we should achieve, and (2) what we should not do in pursuit of that achievement. What Carver means by (3) and (4) is a little fuzzy for me right now. Those lessons may reoccur to me as I continue to transcribe.

Remember that the most effective governance controls what needs to be controlled, yet sets free what can be free.

Yeah, that’s what I just said. The board should have complete control over what success looks like, but only control how to get there by proscribing those strategies that it finds objectionable.

As construed by the Policy Governance model, then, all board policies fall into these groups:

1. Ends. The organizational swap with the world. What human needs are to be met (in results terms), for whom (outside the operating organization), and at what cost or relative worth. It is important that no means be included in this category.

2. Executive Limitations. Boundaries that limit the choice of staff means, normally for reasons of prudence and ethics. While means includes practices, activities, circumstances, and methods, the most comprehensive definition for means is simply “non-ends.”

3. Board-Management Delegation. The manner in which authority is passed to the executive or staff component of the organization and the way in which performance using that authority is reported and assessed.

4. Governance Process. The manner in which the board represents the ownership, disciplines its own activities, and carries out its own work of leadership.

And here’s the (3) and (4) I was a little fuzzy about before. As described in a diagram on page 74 that’s too hard for me to reproduce here, the Board sets policy in each area until the point that any action based on a reasonable interpretation of policy is acceptable to it. The whole organization is represented as a circle, divided into four quadrants, one for each policy area. The Board defines its policies “downward” toward the center of the circle from the boundary of each quadrant, delving more deeply in some areas than in others. The space between the inward edge of these policies and the center of the circle is the territory of action and implementation, which the Board has no direct role in. For (1) and (2), authority over this zone is given to the chief staff executive, and for (3) and (4) that authority is given to the chief governance officer.

The most insidious counterfeits are activities associated with good intentions or with well-accepted reasoning. For example, because making more handouts available for training sessions shows good intent or sense, the number and quality of handouts might come to be judged as more important than the effect of training. The areas to which such confusion can extend are endless. In response to public clamor to compensate teachers on the basis of competence, it is not uncommon for the education establishment to propose incentives for teachers who take more graduate courses!

In the social service field, a revered counterfeit is unit cost. Unit cost is the cost in dollars of providing a time unit of service. Pupil-day expenditure is a comparable public school term. Unit cost comes to be the measure of whether a service organization is doing as much per dollar as it should. But unit cost is not related to the effectiveness of a service, so it does not measure productivity (efficiency in producing benefits per dollar), as social programs pretend it does. For example, the unit cost mentality leads to the assumption that $80 per hour or professional activity is better than $110 per hour, although there is absolutely no reason to believe so. Perhaps the $110-per-hour serve is 150 percent more effective in attaining the results sought! Unit cost would simply be an innocuous measure if institutions had not come to believe it to be a true productivity measure.

An organization can become so permeated by the belief that well-intended or reasonable actions (rather than results) are the reason for existence that no one realizes something is awry. A striking example is the allegiance given to services and programs as if they were results. Services and programs are often treated as if they have value in themselves; however, they are only packages of prescribed activities. In Policy Governance, services and programs are always and only means. The ends concept prevents righteous busyness from becoming just as meaningful as results, or perhaps even more so.

The threat of good activity being perceived as an end is so great that it can hardly be overstated. Without constant vigilance and systems to support that vigilance, says Odiorne (1974), “People tend to become so engrossed in activity that they lose sight of its purpose… They become so enmeshed in activity they lose sight of why they are doing it, and the activity becomes a false goal, an end in itself… Falling into the activity trap is not the result of stupidity. In fact, the most intelligent, highly educated people tend to be those most likely to become entrapped in interesting and complex activities” (pp. 1-7).

It is not that good intentions or sensible actions by staff are unimportant. It is that they in no way constitute the reason for an organization’s existence. Commendable activities are only means.

Boy, do I hear that. In coming up with our measurements of quality, I had better make sure we are measuring ends and not means.

A deputy CEO to whom everyone else reports when the CEO is unavailable is almost sure to represent wasted managerial power. More than two executives vertically configured, each with supervision over only one person, almost certainly means someone has a position but no job.

Had to throw that one in, since that was exactly the situation I was previously in.

Though it is unlikely to do so, the board may choose not to address more detailed specifications after it has adopted the top statement. If the board agrees that any reasonable interpretation of the global ends language on the part of the CEO would be acceptable, then it need say no more. That is, if all the possible priorities among subresults, subrecipients, and costs are acceptable, there is no reason for the board to narrow the expected results by passing more policies. The board can simply refrain from further pronouncements and allow the CEO to resolve all smaller or narrower choices among ends. Most boards are understandably reluctant to leave such broad issues to the CEO, so they rarely stop at this point.

The top statement is the global ends statement, or the mission statement, so this means that some boards may only define that and leave all implementation to the CEO. Few associations would do that, but the point is an important one. They could. The board should only define as much as they need to and no more.

Further, the policies do not give the CEO power to do this or that. They take power or latitude away (“You may not…”). The CEO has whatever power the board does not withhold: the board is saying, “Go till we say stop,” rather than “Stop till we say go.”

This is truly how my new association runs things and it is a new dynamic for me to get used to.

Here’s a good summary of how Carver thinks the Board and the CEO (“president”) should interact with each other:

Garden City Community College, Garden City, Kansas

Board-Management Delegation Policy

“Delegation to the President”

All board authority delegated to staff is delegated through the president so that all authority and accountability of staff—as far as the board is concerned—is considered to be the authority and accountability of the president.

1. The board will direct the president to achieve certain results for certain recipients, at a certain cost through the establishment of Ends policies. The board will limit the latitude the president may exercise in practices, methods, conduct, and other “means” through the establishment of Executive Limitations policies.

2. As long as the president uses any reasonable interpretation of the board’s Ends and Executive Limitations policies, the president is authorized to establish all further policies, make all decisions, take all actions, establish all practices, and develop all activities.

3. The board may change its Ends and Executive Limitations policies, thereby shifting the boundary between the board and president domains. By doing so, the board changes the latitude given to the president. So long as any particular delegation is in place, the board members will respect and support the president’s choices.

4. Only decisions of the board acting as a body are binding upon the president.

5. Decisions or instructions of individual board members, officers, or committees are not binding on the president except in rare circumstances when the board has specifically authorized such exercise of authority.

6. In the case of board members or committees requesting information or assistance without board authorization, the president can refuse such requests that require—in the president’s judgment—a material amount of staff time or funds or are disruptive.

Wouldn’t it be great if it really worked that way? Careful what you wish for. Here’s more:

Board members and the CEO are colleagues. The relationship between the CEO and any individual board member is collegial, not hierarchical. Because the CEO is accountable only to the full board and because no board member has individual authority, the CEO and board members are equals. The relationship between the CEO and the board chairperson should be one of supportive peers as well. They are not hierarchically related, because to be so would shift the CEO function to the chairperson.

This is one I really need to work on. The Chairman is not my boss. The Board is my boss. The Chairman and I are peers, each working to achieve the Ends set by the Board. I should stop acting like he’s my boss.

If the board adopts the discipline of monitoring only what it has already addressed in policy, its anxiety will drive it to develop all the policies needed. “If you haven’t said how it ought to be, don’t ask how it is,” describes the principle that forces a board to monitor instead of meander.

Great advice. How do you implement it?

The importance of limiting CEO evaluation to the criteria represented by board policies on ends and executive limitations is so great as to merit repetition. It is common for boards to indulge their (or their CEO’s) need to assess CEO skills and personality. To be sure, CEOs, like anyone else, have areas that need improvement. It is to their benefit for them to seek the help of knowledgeable advisors and to continue their education and development. But if, commendably, they do so and ends are not achieved or executive limitations not observed, why should they earn points for self-improvement efforts? On the other hand, if they do no self-development but achieve the ends and observe the executive limitations, why should they be penalized? The purpose of evaluating the CEO is not to become the CEO’s coach. In fact, it is best for the board not to think of itself as evaluating the CEO at all. It should evaluate the organization based on relevant board policies and pin that evaluation on the CEO.

Here, here. And dammit, if that isn’t what my new Board is doing with me. They are giving me a mechanism to pursue my own professional development, but they are not tying my evaluation to it. I’m being evaluated on performance goals for the association.

Governing - Hands On!

Examples of What the Board Should Do Hands On

1. Set the board’s work plan and agenda for the year and for each meeting

2. Determine board training and development needs

3. Attend to discipline in board attendance, following bylaws and other self-imposed rules

4. Become expert in governance

5. Meet with and gather wisdom from the ownership

6. Establish the limits of the CEO’s authority to budget, administer finances and compensation, establish programs, and otherwise manage the organization

7. Examine monitoring data and determine where the organization has achieved a reasonable interpretation of board-stated criteria

Managing the Staff - Hands Off!

Examples of What the Board and Its CGO Should Keep Hands Off

1. Establish services, programs, curricula, or budgets

2. Approve the CEO’s personnel, program, or budgetary plans

3. Render any judgments or assessments of staff activity for which no previous board expectations have been stated

4. Determine staff development needs, terminations, or promotions

5. Design staff jobs or instruct any staff member subordinate to the CEO (except when the CEO has assigned a staff member to some board function)

6. Decide on the organizational chart and staffing requirements

7. Establish committees to advice or help staff

+ + +

The Board’s Responsibility for Board Performance

Board members, not staff, are trustees in a moral sense for the ownership and, consequently, must bear initial responsibility for the integrity of governance. “He that would govern others, first should be the master of himself” (Massinger, 1979). The board is responsible for its own development, its own job design, its own discipline, and its own performance. Before any discussion of board process to improve governance, this responsibility must be clear to board and staff alike. Primary responsibility for board development does not rest in the CEO, staff, funding bodies, or government. These other parties doubtless have an interest in better governance. They may even seize the opportunity to affect governance quality. But they are not where responsibility for governance resides.

Only responsible stewardship can justify a board’s considerable authority. Board members who do not choose to accept this breadth of responsibility should resign. If they do not, it is the responsibility of other board members to structure a board development system in which such persons are, if not “converted,” eliminated from the board. Being warm, willing to attend meetings, inclined to donate money, and interested in the organizational subject matter do not constitute responsible board membership. These characteristics are desirable but far from sufficient.

It is inviting to rely on the CEO to motivate a board. This scenario frequently extends further than the provision of an occasional motivational “fix.” It may extend as far as spoon-feeding. No matter how well the CEO tells the board what to do and when to do it, governance cannot be excellent under these conditions. Going through the motions, even the “right” motions, is fake leadership that transforms a CEO into a baby-sitter. Only a deluded board waits for its CEO to make it a good board.

Under these conditions, public-spirited and ethical CEOs prod the board to do and say what they think a responsible governing body should do and say. With time, observers of such a situation may question the need for the board to be responsible: “If everything turns out well, what is the fuss? Getting the board to be truly responsible may be pedantic and perhaps unrealistic. After all, board members frequently are just volunteers; how can a part-time, outside group of largely nonprofessionals presume to tell a professional or technical staff what to do?” This litany impedes any further inclination to motivate leaders to lead.

The preceding unhappy scenario is the best-case scenario! What if the CEO is not public-spirited and ethical? The improprieties resulting from lackadaisical governance are easy to imagine. I have observed boards whose laissez-faire rubber-stamping came to an abrupt end upon discovery of misconduct. Most nonprofit boards are too private or too small for public embarrassment to be a realistic threat, but they must endure their own awareness of having been asleep at the throttle. Their failure may have been not in misjudging a specific issue but simply in not having realized that the throttle belonged to them. The debacles at Enron, WorldCom, and other corporations are prime examples of the failure of governance that are familiar to anyone who reads a newspaper.

Boards are responsible for their attendance, discipline, governance methods, development, agendas, and ability to envision the future. Others can help. Surely the CEO should even be required to help. Helpers, however, can only assist a body that has assumed full responsibility for itself; helpers can only marginally compensate when ostensibly responsible parties are not taking responsibility.

The board of the Ohio College of Podiatric Medicine has set the standards to be met in the conduct of board affairs. Notice how the board makes clear that it, not its staff, is responsible for the board’s governance performance.

Ohio College of Podiatric Medicine, Cleveland

Governance Process Policy

“Governing Style”

The board will govern with an emphasis on (a) outward vision rather than an internal preoccupation, (b) strategic leadership more than administrative detail, (c) clear distinction of board and chief executive roles, (d) collective rather than individual decisions, (e) future rather than past or present, and (f) proactivity rather than reactivity. The board will:

1. Deliberate in many voices, but govern in one.

2. Cultivate a sense of group responsibility. The board, not the staff, will be responsible for excellence in governing. The board will be an initiator of policy, not merely a reactor to staff initiatives. The board will use the expertise of individual members to enhance the ability of the board as a body, rather than to substitute the individual judgments for the board’s values.

3. Direct, control and inspire the organization through the careful establishment of broad written policies reflecting the board’s values and perspectives. The board’s major focus will be on the intended long term impacts outside the operating organization, not on the administrative or programmatic means of attaining those effects.

4. Enforce upon itself whatever discipline is needed to govern with excellence. Discipline will apply to matters such as attendance, preparation for meetings, policymaking principles, respect of roles, and ensuring the continuity of governance capability. Continual board development will include orientation of new members in the board’s governance process and periodic board discussion of process improvement. The board will allow no officer, individual or committee of the board to hinder or be an excuse for not fulfilling its commitments.

5. Monitor and discuss the board’s process and performance at each meeting. Self-monitoring will include comparison of board activity and discipline to policies in the Governance Process and Board-Staff Linkage categories.

This stuff really speaks for itself, doesn’t it? Do I really need to say anything?

Here is a summary of the board’s job products:

1. Linkage to the ownership. The board acts in trusteeship for its ownership and serves as the legitimizing connection between this base and the organization.

2. Explicit governing policies. The values of the whole organization are encompassed by the board’s explicit enunciation and proper categorization of broad policies.

3. Assurance of satisfactory organizational performance. Although the board is not responsible for carrying out the staff’s job, it must ensure that the staff as a total body meets the criteria the board has set. In this way, its accountability for that performance is fulfilled.

Each of these three products is a job output, not a job activity, though any number of attendant activities are implied.

+ + +

Bissell Centre of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Governance Process Policy

“Committee Principles”

The board may, from time to time, establish committees to help carry out its responsibilities. To preserve board holism, committees will be used sparingly, only when other methods have been deemed inadequate. Committees will be used so as to minimally interfere with the wholeness of the board’s job.

1. Board committees may not speak or act for the board except when formally given such authority for specific and time-limited purposes. Such authority will be carefully stated in order not to conflict with authority delegated to the Executive Director.

2. Board committees are to help the board do its job, not to help the staff do its job. Committees will assist the board chiefly by preparing policy alternatives and implications for board deliberation. Board committees are not to be created by the board to advise staff.

3. If a board committee is used to monitor organizational performance in a given area, the same committee will not have helped the board create policy in that area. This is to prevent committee identification with organizational parts rather than the whole.

4. Board committees cannot exercise authority over staff, and in keeping with the board’s focus on the future, board committees will ordinarily have no direct dealings with current staff operations. Further, the board will not impede its direct delegation to the Executive Director by requiring approval of a board committee before an executive action.

If ever there were extracts that I need to take out a read from time to time it is these. Things are so clearly stated and they make SO MUCH SENSE!!!

To promote the degree of strategic leadership championed in these pages, five qualifications, among others, are necessary:

1. Commitment to the ownership and to the organization’s specific area of endeavor. As agents of the organization’s ownership, board members must be committed to that trust. Commitment to the ends as currently stated is important, though less so, for ends are a continuing creation of the board itself. Therefore, fidelity to those in whose name ends are created is more essential than fidelity to the current wording.

2. Propensity for thinking in terms of systems and context. Some people focus quickly on parts. Whatever the relationship of whole to part might be, these persons more readily focus on the part itself for inspection, discussion, and decision. Such persons, with all good intentions, place distractions, if not massive roadblocks, in the way of strategic leadership. Prospective members who are more comfortable with parts have a valuable gift, but one that can more usefully be shared as a volunteer advisor to staff than as a board member. The board needs members who are cybernetically aware, drawn naturally to the harmony of the whole.

3. Ability and eagerness to deal with values, vision, and the long term. The board members who make the best contributions are those who have a natural propensity for looking not only beyond the stream of single events but beyond systems to the values on which they are based. It is only a small step from divining today’s values as they currently are to planning tomorrow’s values as they should be. What stronger argument can be made that a board member’s greatest gift to enterprise is educing, weighing, challenging, and frequently fighting over values?

4. Ability to participate assertively in deliberation. Productive board deliberation depends on bringing the foregoing characteristics to the governance struggle. Boards are overly tolerant of members who fail to share their capacities in a way that enhances the deliberative process. It is not enough to have the potential to be a good board member; the potential must be manifested through participation.

5. Willingness to delegate, to allow others to make decisions. Board members, with respect to one another, must be able to share power in the group process and, with respect to staff, must be able to delegate. Board members who are loath to delegate will impair the board’s leadership by constantly bringing small issues up for consideration. They will impair staff by denying them the opportunity to grow.

+ + +

Mediocrity can pass tests that excellence fails.

This is referring specifically to the funding bodies, regulatory agencies, and lawmakers that may require associations to do certain things or organize themselves in certain ways, things and ways that made run counter to the principles of Policy Governance. Carver’s advice is, obviously, you must follow the law, but that’s not why I flagged this quote. To me its another reminder of the way the mediocre world rejects the unrecognized genius. It’s the mediocre ones who design the tests, so is it any wonder that the mediocre are the ones best positioned to pass those tests? When excellence fails, it isn’t because its inferior to mediocrity, it’s because it’s being measured against inappropriate standards. It’s like the CME world that is set up to measure class time instead of learning.

For self-evaluation to have practical effect, it must be frequent. In fact, frequent crude evaluations have a far greater effect than infrequent precise ones. For that reason, boards should devote at least a brief amount of time in each meeting to evaluating whether they are on course. An annual, more meticulous evaluation may be used as well, but it will not have as great an effect on ongoing board performance. In no event should board self-evaluation be a matter of downloading some generic form from the Internet.

Yes, I’m going to do this.

Universally Accepted Principles of Accountable Governance

1. The board governs on behalf of all owners.

2. The board is the highest authority in the company, below only the owners.

3. The board is the initial authority in the company.

4. The board is accountable for everything about the company.

5. All authority and accountability is vested in the board as a group.

6. Governance roles and executive roles have different purposes.

7. Delegation should me maximized, short of risking the board’s fulfillment of its accountability.

8. Assessing board performance requires evaluation of both governance and management.

And here’s the final summary.

So what are the essential elements of the model, in the absence of which one can be said to be borrowing from Policy Governance but not using it? After all, the use of the word model is not happenstance; used in its scientific rather than its structural sense, it means a system of integrated, interacting parts. As with a clock, removing one wheel may not spoil the clock’s looks, but it seriously damages its ability to tell time. It becomes an ornament, not a clock. So in Policy Governance, which wheels would have to be in place to still have our “clock?” Here, adapted from previous publications, is a list of the minimum requirements:

1. The board connects its authority and accountability to those who morally (if not legally) own the organization—if such a class exists beyond the board itself—seeing its role as servant-leader to and for that group. Owners, as used in the Policy Governance model, are not all of the stakeholders but are only those who stand in a position corresponding to shareholders in an equity corporation. Therefore, staff and clients are not owners unless they independently qualify as such.

2. With the ownership above it and operational matters below it, a governing board forms a distinct link in the chain of command or moral authority. Its role is commander, not advisor. It exists to exercise that authority and properly empower others rather than to be management’s consultant, ornament, instrument, or adversary. The board—not the staff—bears full and direct responsibility for the process and products of governance, just as it bears accountability for any authority and performance expectations delegated to others.

3. The board makes authoritative decisions directed toward management and toward itself, its individual members, and committees only as a total group. That is, the board’s authority is a group authority rather than a collection of individual authorities.

4. The board defines in writing (a) the results, changes, or benefits that should come about for (b) the specified recipients, beneficiaries, or other targeted groups, and (c) at what cost or relative priority for the various benefits or various beneficiaries. These are not all the possible benefits that may occur but are those that form the purpose of the organization, the achievement of which constitutes organizational success. Policy documents containing solely these decisions are categorized as Ends in the terminology of the Policy Governance model but can be called by whatever name a board chooses, as long as the concept is strictly preserved.

5. The board defines in writing the behaviors, values added, practices, disciplines, and conduct of the board itself and of the board’s delegation and accountability relationship with its own subcomponents and with the executive part of the organization. Because these are non-ends decisions, they are called board means to distinguish them from ends and staff means. All board behaviors, decisions, and documents must be consistent with these pronouncements. In the terminology of the Policy Governance model, documents containing solely these decisions are categorized as Governance Process and Board-Management Delegation but can be called by whatever names a board chooses, as long as the concepts are strictly preserved.

6. The board makes decisions with respect to its staff’s means decisions and actions only in a prospective way in order simultaneously (a) to avoid prescribing means and (b) to place off-limits those means that would be unacceptable even if they work. Policy documents containing solely these decisions are categorized as Executive Limitations in the terminology of the Policy Governance model but can be called by whatever name a board chooses, as long as the concept is strictly preserved.

7. The board’s decisions in Ends, Governance Process, Board-Management Delegation, and Executive Limitations begin at the broadest, most inclusive level and, if necessary, continue into more detailed levels that narrow the interpretative range of higher levels, proceeding one articulated level at a time. These documents are exhaustive, replacing or obviating board expressions of mission, vision, philosophy, values, strategy, goals, and budget. They are called policies in the terminology of the Policy Governance model but can be called by whatever name a board chooses, as long as the concept is strictly preserved.

8. If the board chooses to delegate to management through a chief executive officer, it honors the exclusive authority and accountability of that role as the sole connector between governance and management. In any event, the board never delegates the same authority or responsibility to more than one point.

9. In delegating decisions beyond the ones recorded in board policies, the board grants the delegatee the right to use any reasonable interpretation of those policies. In the case of Ends and Executive Limitations, when a CEO exists, the delegatee is the CEO. In the case of Governance Process and Board-management Delegation, that delegatee is the CGO (chief governance officer), except when the board has explicitly designated another board member or board committee.

10. The board monitors organizational performance solely through fair but systematic assessment of whether a reasonable interpretation of its Ends policies is being achieved within the boundaries set by a reasonable interpretation of its Executive Limitations policies. If there is a CEO, this assessment constitutes the CEO’s evaluation.

+ + +

This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

FARCHRIST TALES

BOOK THREE:

THE UNDERGOD

At the time, I had thought my secret meetings with Roy Stonerow, where he taught me rudimentary magic and gave me a different vision of the universe, were just that—secret. But now I can’t help but wonder if Otis and my mother might have had some inkling of what I was up to. With the benefit of adult hindsight, it is difficult to believe a young teenage boy could have kept such a thing hidden from his parents in such a small town. But I still like to think they were ignorant, especially my mother. Even now I am just beginning to realize the kind of pain she must have felt knowing what her son was doing in that little red house down the street. I guess I will never know if she knew or not, but I have to say I did not do what I did, I did not learn what I learned, out of any kind of spite for the way of life she offered me. It is a good way, her life, and for thousands it is all they will ever need, but it was not for me. I am not proud of this, but neither am I ashamed.

+ + +

Brisbane followed the back of the black-clad ork down a short, dark hallway with Ternosh and Wister right behind him. The procession marched on in silence and shortly they emerged in another large chamber lit by the flickering light of torches.

How do they keep all these torches lit? Brisbane wondered briefly. And where is all the smoke? These things are burning constantly and none of these rooms are smoky.

Brisbane’s wonderment about the torches did not last long. His attention was quickly captured by the shape and contents of the chamber before him. It was circular, nearly as huge as the banquet chamber, and in the center of the room was a pit, an arena that dropped ten feet below the floor of the chamber with no visible means of entrance or exit. The floor just suddenly gave way and dropped straight down to the circular pit. All around the pit, the pug-trolang which it had to be, were stone benches like the ones surrounding the table in the banquet chamber, except in two places. If the pit was the face of a clock, at six o’clock sat a stone chair and at twelve o’clock stood a stone pedestal. On the pedestal was a golden incense burner like the one Ternosh had used to summon his Demosk.

And, leaning against the face of the pedestal, scabbarded and point down on the edge of the pug-trolang, was Angelika, her emerald twinkling in the torchlight.

Brisbane’s heart rose into his throat as he saw her. Angelika! his mind called out to her. I have found you!

—Be patient,— was her only reply. —Be patient and be strong.—

The black-clad orks quickly went ahead and took their seats around the pit. Ternosh held Brisbane back and Wister stood solidly beside Tornestor. The Sumak gestured to the outer wall of the circular chamber and Brisbane saw it was lined with racks of weapons, red-eye shields, and black armor.

“Grum Wister and Grum Brisbane,” Tornestor said. “These are the finest weapons and armor of the clan. Choose well and may they serve you well in the pug-trolang.”

Wister immediately went to the wall and began to put on a chainmail vest that had been hanging there. Brisbane turned to Tornestor.

“Sumak Tornestor,” he said, summoning as much respect as he could into his voice. “Am I to understand I may arm myself with any weapon here?”

Tornestor looked at Brisbane with a look mixed of surprise and contempt. “You are unfamiliar with our ways,” the Sumak said. “You are not to speak to me unless I speak to you first. I will forget your indiscretion this time. Yes, the choice of weapon is yours.”

Brisbane bowed his head. “I am sorry for misspeaking.” He brought his head up and pointed at Angelika. “May I use that sword?”

Wister was picking out a shield.

Tornestor looked at the sword and then turned back to Brisbane. “No,” he said. “That weapon bares an enchantment upon it and it has been given as a gift to Gruumsh One-Eye. No one may use it.”

Of course you can’t use her, Brisbane told himself. That would have been too easy. He quickly bowed again and backed away from the Sumak.

Tornestor began to discuss something with Ternosh and Brisbane was left alone to arm himself. He looked back at Wister and saw the ork had chosen a huge battle axe to fight with. Brisbane turned back to the weapons.

Angelika, he thought. They won’t let me use you. What should I do?

—Patience, young Brisbane. You will wield me soon enough. You can defeat this evil creature without me. These demons think they can control you and me, but they cannot. Our time will come.—

Demons? Brisbane thought.

—They are abominations of nature, Brisbane. They must be destroyed.—

Brisbane began to look through the pieces of armor, searching for something that would protect him and yet not hamper his movements. He found a chainmail shirt, much like the vest Wister had chosen, and after removing his cumbersome red and white robes, he put it on over the simple cloth shirt and pants he wore underneath. The stiff material under the chains of the armor was black.

Abominations, Angelika?

—Abominations, Brisbane. Twisted creatures of evil born against the will of Grecolus. They must be destroyed.—

Angelika’s voice was like an itch in his head. Brisbane blindly picked a round red-eye shield off the wall and began to examine a rack full of all sorts of swords.

—Choose well, young Brisbane. Even in this den of evil there are some blades of quality. You’ll need something sharp and sturdy to gut this devil.—

Brisbane picked up a sword and swung it experimentally through the air. Its balance was too far off so he returned it to the rack. He chose another and, liking the feel of this one, tested its sharpness against the heel of his head. The weapon was double-edged and had been recently sharpened and oiled. Whoever it had belonged to before the orks got hold of it had taken good care of it.

—A fine weapon, Brisbane. More than enough to spill evil blood.—

Brisbane, oblivious to his surroundings, began to take the sword through the combat exercises Roundtower had taught him so long ago. He whirled it through striking thrusts and defensive postures, getting into the feel of the blade. It felt good in his hands and Brisbane began to speed up the execution of his exercises.

—Yes, Brisbane. That’s the way. You and the sword. You are one.—

Brisbane finished, bringing the blade to his side as if he had a scabbard to put it in. He suddenly became aware of where he was and he looked stiffly up at the orks watching him. Ternosh had left, but both Tornestor and Wister were there, their eyes betraying a certain amazement they felt for what they had just seen.

Brisbane met Wister’s red eyes. “Let’s do it.”

Wister actually smiled at Brisbane and then started off in the direction of the pug-trolang. Brisbane fell into step behind him and Tornestor followed the human.

When they arrived at the edge of the pit, Tornestor took the seat that had been placed there for him and Wister and Brisbane dropped themselves down into the battle circle. They took positions about ten feet apart, facing each other, and stood still waiting for the command to begin.

Brisbane looked up at the edge of the pit and at the orkish faces looking down on him. The black-clad orks sat evenly spaced around the circle, and the two with red stripes sat on either side of the Sumak as they had at dinner. Brisbane was surprised to see Ternosh standing next to the pedestal—and Angelika—with his hands clasped behind his back. Brisbane turned back to Wister and found himself in the middle of an angry staring match.

A hush fell over the proceedings as Tornestor rose to his full seven feet. “The klatru of the Clan of the Red Eye,” he announced formally, “has gathered here around the pug-trolang to witness a masokom between our brothers as described in the ancient ways. At my signal, Grum Wister and Grum Brisbane was clash in battle that will not stop until one of them is dead and gone on to Gruumsh’s battlefield.”

“Praise be to the victor,” the assemblage chanted as one. “And strength to the loser in his new conflict.”

“Grumak Ternosh,” Tornestor said. “Summon your Demosk to witness the masokom.”

Tornestor sat and Ternosh lifted the lid off the incense burner. The Grumak waved his hand over it and Brisbane saw a spark jump off one of his fingers and fall into the golden vessel.

He’s summoning his Demosk, Brisbane thought as Wister’s eyes bore into him. Super. That smoke is going to make us all loopy. I’ll be lucky just to see Wister, to say nothing about killing him.

—He is not your match, Brisbane. None of them are.—

Brisbane looked up to see Angelika but his eyes were drawn to the smoke already pouring out of the five-pointed vents in the lid of the incense burner. Ternosh began his eerie chanting and Brisbane turned back to his opponent.

Wister stood taut, like a dog on a chain, and as the white smoke began to swirl around him, Brisbane thought the ork began to look more and more like a dog. His pig snout became a furry muzzle and his pig ears flopped down like those of a lap dog. The vision was fleeting and sporadic, as most of the smoke stayed well above the floor of the pug-trolang. Every once and a while, a wisp would blow in front of Brisbane, smelling thickly of oranges, distorting Wister from an armored pig-man to an armored dog-man. For a gleeful moment, Brisbane tried to decide which vision was uglier.

Brisbane decided it would be best not to take his eyes off Wister again. There was no telling exactly when Tornestor’s order to commence combat would come, but Brisbane knew when it did, Wister would be on him like all the fury in the hells. To his right, where Ternosh and the pedestal—and Angelika—were, he heard a familiar voice.

“Why have you summoned me, Grumak Ternosh?”

The Demosk. The voice was inside his head again, but this time he could clearly hear it in his ears, too. Except the voice in his mind was speaking common and the voice in his ears was speaking orkish. The effect was strange and unsettling. Wister shifted his grip on the battle axe. Brisbane wondered again exactly what a Demosk was.

“A masokom,” Brisbane heard Ternosh say, “must be witnessed. Grum Wister has challenged Grum Brisbane.”

Brisbane’s head spun as a wisp of smoke flowed around it.

“I am ready,” the Demosk said.

Out of the corner of his smoke-irritated eye, Brisbane saw Sumak Tornestor rise to his feet again. Wister’s right foot took a half-step towards Brisbane and was slowly dragged back.

—Here it comes, Brisbane. The evil must be vanquished.—

“Begin!” Tornestor’s gravel voice boomed out over the pug-trolang and Wister seemed to fly at Brisbane, his shield held in front of him and the battle axe cocked back, ready to strike.

Brisbane stood his ground, watching the ork advance and the position of the weapon in his hand. Wister brought the axe down on Brisbane with deathly quickness, but Brisbane was able to shift to the ork’s side and deflect the blow with his shield.

The first clang of metal against metal was met with a rousing cheer from the orks assembled around the pit. Wister ran past Brisbane with his momentum and turned back when he was out of his attack range.

“I’m going to kill you, human!” the Grum shouted as he charged in and swung his axe sideways at Brisbane’s head.

Brisbane ducked easily under the sweeping strike and stabbed at Wister as his body turned a flank towards him. His blade glanced off the ork’s chainmail vest and left Wister uninjured. The ork brought the axe back in another sweeping arc, this one aimed at Brisbane’s midsection. Brisbane had plenty of time to back up and out of the path of the sharp blade and, as he did, a surprising realization came over him.

Wister was, quite simply, a terrible warrior. His attack was certainly ferocious, but it lacked any semblance of grace or finesse. The ork had no sort of practiced control over his weapon, he just madly swung it back and forth and up and down, hoping to hit his opponent and finish him off quickly. Surely if that axe blade did connect with Brisbane’s body, the combat would instantly be over, but the ork’s strikes were clumsy and repetitious, and Brisbane had no problem avoiding them.

Wister charged Brisbane again with a cry of rage and Brisbane easily rotated away from him, pushing the blow off his shield. The orks around the pit were cheering with every charge Wister made and they let out disappointed moans each time Brisbane thwarted the attack.

Wister was turning to charge again.

—What’s the matter?— Angelika’s voice tolled in his head, muted strangely by the effects of the incense smoke. —He has left himself open to your blade many times. Why do you not strike him down?—

“Die!” Wister screamed as Brisbane brushed off another charge and retreated back several steps.

He’s no warrior, Angelika.

Brisbane thought he was just thinking these words to his sword, but he must have said them aloud because Wister, who had been panting for breath, suddenly opened his eyes wide in senseless rage and jumped into another charge.

—Of course not. Evil can never stand up against holy forces. End his unnatural life, Brisbane. Destroy this evil monster.—

Brisbane pushed Wister’s charge aside and ineffectually struck his sword against the ork’s armor.

—That’s the way, Brisbane. Go for the head. It is foolishly unprotected.—

Angelika, this is not combat. It takes no skill to kill such an opponent.

Wister turned and stood panting out of Brisbane’s reach. Sweat was running down his pig face. Groans were beginning to come from the orks assembled around the pit—groans of displeasure. This was evidently not the sort of spectacle they had expected.

“…kill…you…human…” Wister said in between breaths in a mad litany of rage. He rushed into battle again but this time did not charge past Brisbane. Instead he stopped before him and began to engage in more traditional fighting.

This was much better than the crazy charges the ork had made before, but his attack was still unskilled and clumsy. Brisbane had no problem avoiding or deflecting the slow strikes of the battle axe. He could either dodge aside or absorb the impact on his shield and sometimes he could even foil an attack with the blade of his sword. Wister had left himself open to fatal attack many times, but each time he did, Brisbane found himself unable to take advantage of the opening. Occasionally, he would strike at Wister’s armor for show, knowing he would not hurt the ork that way. It was just hard for Brisbane to kill like this. The orks he had killed before had been somehow different. Their skill hadn’t been much better, but the circumstances had been very different. Then, he had been fighting to protect himself and the others in his party from a vicious attack begun by the orks. Now, it was a fight of honor, with rigid rules and customs, wholly different from the slaughter he had taken part in beside the Mystic River. It was hard for Brisbane to pinpoint, but this battle with Wister down here in the pug-trolang with the entire klatru watching was somehow more important than any battle he had ever fought before. It was important that he win this battle, but there was something else that seemed even more important. To strike Wister down so easily, like a rag doll, was far beneath what this kind of combat demanded. In a way, killing the ork with the ease of removing an opponent’s pawn from a chessboard would destroy the entire orkish institution of the masokom and the pug-trolang.

—What do you care of this? They are evil. They are the enemy.—

So I’ve been told.

Suddenly, Wister broke off his attack and stepped back and away from Brisbane. The ork looked up at the edge of the pit and Brisbane’s eyes followed his. The smoke from the burning incense was much thicker up there and through it Brisbane could make out the vague shapes of the other orks. The huge Tornestor at one end, the black-clad klatru lining the rim, and Ternosh with his glowing Demosk at the other. All were silent and seemed to be waiting for something.

Wister took a moment to catch his breath. He returned his gaze to Brisbane and quietly addressed the group. “He is toying with me,” the Grum said. “His skill far surpasses mine. I am no match for him. I declare myself the loser.”

With that statement, Wister dropped his shield and his axe on either side of himself and pulled his chainmail vest apart to reveal his hairy chest. “You have won, Grum Brisbane. Send me quickly to the army of Gruumsh One-Eye.” Wister closed his red eyes.

Brisbane was not sure what to do. Wister’s intention was obvious. He wanted Brisbane to plunge his sword into his heart, killing him. Wister had named him the winner, but now Brisbane felt like anything else but.

When Brisbane had not done anything for a full minute, Tornestor spoke. “Grum Brisbane, Grum Wister had conceded defeat. Will you not end the masokom?”

Brisbane kept his eyes on Wister. The ork had not moved or spoken since he had closed his eyes. Until Tornestor had spoken, Brisbane had thought all time had stopped.

“Must I?” Brisbane asked.

—Yes!—

“It is your duty,” Tornestor said. “Grum Wister has lost his challenge. He cannot be left alive.”

Brisbane slowly raised his sword. He looked at it carefully. It really was a fine weapon, well cared for and perfectly balanced.

—Do it, young Brisbane. It is your first step in regaining me. Do this and none of them will be able to stop you. I will be yours again. I will be yours.—

The voice was like sweet music in his head. Deep and throaty, if Angelika had been a woman she would have been fair of face of voluptuous of figure. The voice was that of a secret harem girl, the one kept in hiding who could please her master like no other. Brisbane listened to that voice and realized he was reacting exactly as if she were a woman whispering wet promises of sexual ecstasy instead of a sword directing him to kill Wister. His heart was beating hard and fast and he could feel the beginnings of an erection in his underpants.

Brisbane thrust his sword into Wister’s chest and the ork dropped to the floor, his life flooding out of the wound. There was no release for Brisbane, the way there should have been if the metaphor of sexual congress was to be extended. There was no sense of victory in it. There was only a sinking feeling of disgust that quivered in his gut and pulled his testicles back up close to his body.

—It is done. Praise Grecolus for his wisdom and Brisbane for his courage.—

Shut up, Angelika. Just shut up.

“Grum Brisbane has defeated Grum Wister,” Brisbane heard the Demosk say. “Do you require anything else of me, Grumak Ternosh?”

Brisbane looked up at Ternosh and the pedestal.

“No,” Ternosh said.

Instantly, the figure of the Demosk vanished and the smoke stopped coming out of the vents. Brisbane went over to the side of the pug-trolang and he was hauled out by some of the black-clad orks. By then the smoke that had filled the room had almost completely dissipated. Slowly and silently, the orks began to file out of the chamber, leaving only Ternosh, Brisbane, and the body of Wister in the pit. The orks all avoided eye contact with Brisbane as they strode past him.

“What now?” Brisbane asked the Grumak.

Ternosh took the sword and shield away from Brisbane and began to help him off with the chainmail shirt. “You have won,” he said. “You now take Wister’s place in the clan. You are now my first Grum.”

Brisbane looked down into the pit. “I’m your only Grum.”

“What was that?” Ternosh asked.

Brisbane shook his head. “What about his body?”

“It will be removed later.”

“What did he mean?” Brisbane asked. “What is the army of Gruumsh One-Eye?”

Ternosh sighed as he helped Brisbane back into his robes. “Another time, Brisbane. It has been a very long day.”

Brisbane agreed it had been a very long day indeed.

Ternosh said goodnight and left Brisbane alone in the chamber. On his way out, the Grumak put the armor and weapon back in the racks against the wall.

Brisbane turned to look at Angelika leaning against the pedestal under the incense burner. He thought about going over there and taking her. He thought about taking her and trying to find his way out of these caves. He thought about taking her and fighting his way out, killing anyone who stood between him and the exit. He thought about taking her and fighting his way out of the compound, killing the orks and their guard dogs in a mad rush for freedom. He thought about all these things, but in the end he decided to leave Angelika where she was for now and go back to his chamber. Ternosh had been right, it had been a long day, and anything he thought about doing could certainly wait until tomorrow.

Brisbane quickly got out of there before Angelika started talking to him again.

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.