George W. Bush, a candidate for President I do not admire, recently did something I did admire--repeatedly refused to answer questions about whether, as a young man, he had used cocaine. Though Bush has not been young for several decades, the reporters justified their questions by claiming that the answers would give insight into Bush's .1 character"--and so, into his fitness for office. The use of cocaine, even in a well-spent youth, would have been a felony. Our chief magistrate should not be a felon.

Bush's refusal seemed consciously to raise a deep question about the relation between past conduct, character, and our assessment of fitness for office. Bush did not refuse to answer all 11 character questions". For example, he willingly admitted that, at age forty, having gotten drunk once too often, he gave up alcohol. He drew the line for character questions a decade or so back, as if there were a moral statute of limitations on them.

Practrical Importance of Character
Why is this "character" so interesting to reporters? That's not just a philosopher's question.

Professions too must decide what character is--and not as philosophers do, in the abstract and with plenty of time to get every detail right; professions must decide in particular cases, sometimes in a hurry. For example, in the United States, part of admitting lawyers to practice is subjecting them to an evaluation of their "character and fitness". A "character and fitness committee" not only interviews each would-be lawyer, asking at least a few questions relevant to assessing character; it actively seeks evidence of bad character, asking the dean of the would-be lawyer's law school, members of the faculty, and other references whether they know anything reflecting adversely on the candidate's character or fitness to practice law. "Character" seems to allow investigation of matters beyond mere fitness to practice law. These investigations are not pro forma. About the time Bush was refusing to say whether he had used cocaine, a character and fitness committee in Illinois was denying admission to the leader of a white supremacist organization. Is white supremacism a flaw in character? Should it bar one from the practice of law? The committee had to decide.

Some Senses of "Character"
The terms "character, "virtue", and even "integrity" are often treated as synonyms. There are, however, important differences between "character" and these near synonyms. This may be one place the differences matter. The root idea of "character" seems to be something engraved or written. In this sense, we might speak of "Chinese characters" (meaning the symbols in which Chinese is written). In a closely related sense, we frequently speak of the characters of a novel or play, those real or fictional persons described ("characterized") there. A "real character" is someone who seems to have stepped out of a lively novel or play; a "bad character", someone who would make a good villain in such a work.

In the nineteenth century, a servant who made a bad impression on an employer might worry that she would "lose her character" or "get a bad character", meaning that she would get a bad reference from an employer. A servant who had lost her character would have trouble getting another serving job. Here "character" is close to record".

Today, when we think of character, we think of it in none of these writing-related senses. Most of us do not even think of it as an "internal" record, the revealing marks the friction of life cuts into the soul. Indeed, we are likely to think of character as relatively static, a diamond that can have "flaws" or "faults" but remains the same more or less, once we reach adulthood .

The Army can claim to "build character" only because the army makes no such claim for senior officers. Their conduct may reveal character but cannot change it. Even a single act, many years ago, may reveal a great deal about character then--and so now.

If George W. Bush was a felon at thirty, he is one still--and, if he were a general, that old felony would be grounds for discharge.

Character is, however, not altogether destiny. We excuse some acts because they are "out of character"; they cannot be attributed to the agent because they are "uncharacteristic"; they are mere accidents revealing nothing about him. How are we to distinguish characteristic from uncharacteristic acts? In practice, we seem to treat as uncharacteristic whatever we cannot fit into the smooth outline of a single life, whatever demands more inventiveness than we possess. The more static we think character, the more we must explain as "out of character".

Virtue and Integrity
The language of virtue seems rather different from that of character. Unvirtuous conduct may or may not be uncharacteristic of the person in question. "Acting out of virtue" is, more or less, the opposite of "acting out of character". If the concern of reporters questioning Bush had been virtue rather than character, they would have viewed Bush's early use of cocaine, if there was any, as a baseline from which to measure his growth in virtue. What would be important would not be the baseline itself but the growth since. His conduct twenty or even ten years ago would not seem important. Because we do not think of virtue in the static way we think of character, we are quite willing to admit that people can grow in virtue over a life time.

Integrity seems to resemble virtue in developing over time; we are unlikely to go back even ten years to decide whether someone, even someone in his forties or fifties, has integrity. Other than that, it is hard to say what integrity is. It certainly is not mere congruence between thought, word, and deed. We would, for example, not attribute integrity to the villain of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus even though, knowing his life was of a piece, he mounted the gallows saying, "If one good deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very soul".

Since this introduction began with questions some reporters asked George Bush, it is fitting that the first professionals whose character we should consider are journalists. They have, as Sandra Borden points out, much to worry about. When we think of journalists today, we are likely to think of drooling bloodhounds sniffing about a laundry basket with no better motive than a byline on the evening news. Borden reminds us that journalists should be better than that. They should ask themselves whether their "sniffing" will yield information relevant to decisions the public should make.

The question of relevance leads her to distinguish between public and private character. Even if all facts about a person are relevant to assessing private character, they might not all be relevant to assessing professional character. What, for example, does a married reporter's long affair tell us about his professional character?

Drawing the Line
Seumas Miller, while accepting the distinction between professional and private character, does much to limit its importance-at least where the profession in question is law enforcement.

For example, an officer's political views, even if never expressed on the job or in public, may be relevant to his fitness for police work.

The public is not in a position to evaluate police decisions. In general, the public gives the police the benefit of the doubt. But if the public in a racially mixed city comes to believe that some of the police are white supremacists, will they go on giving police the benefit of the doubt? Won't police work become harder? Insofar as the line between professional and private character depends on what the public might think, all traits of character are, at least potentially, part of professional character. There is no line between public and private.

To this, Albert Flores responds, in effect, that the line between professional and private character should not depend entirely on what the public might think. Considerations of privacy are also relevant. We need to preserve for each person, even for such public servants as George Bush or our local sheriff, a domain where the public does not enquire. Privacy is itself necessary for developing the professional judgment essential to professional character.

Mike Martin concludes with a series of examples that both reenforce Flores' claims for privacy and also suggest how hard it is to decide how much weight to give them. Martin also calls our attention to a part of character about which our other contributors say nothing, a professional's commitment to standards beyond what the profession requires.

In all these pieces, there is an inclination to think about character as a collection of virtues. Is that the best way to think about character?

--MD