The first was long ago when as a young man I served as chairman of the Planning and Zoning Commission of Des Moines, Ia., the town where I was born and raised and to which I initially returned after completing law school. I was proud of our work, especially we drafted and oversaw enactment of Des Moines’ first city-wide master plan.

Our commission met publicly one evening a week to consider and vote on petitions for zoning variances sought by individuals and businesses. It was at one of these sessions that I faced a moral dilemma.

A local developer had acquired property along one of Des Moines’ major streets. This land, along with adjoining properties, was taken up with large, old homes, all occupied and well kept. The developer planned to tear these houses down and replace them with commercial enterprises. For that, he needed a change in zoning from residential to commercial; in other words, he wanted to “strip zone” that community.  I, for one, believed that strip zoning was an abomination that should be fought wherever possible; so I voted against this proposal, which was defeated by a single vote.

The next day, my father received a telephone call from the developer, who was an important customer of his. In no uncertain terms, the developer told my father that, unless I changed my vote on the zoning change issue, the developer would sever his business relationship with my father. My father immediately got in touch with me, repeated the developer’s demand and threat, and told me that it was vitally important to him that I comply. I refused and continued to do so despite my father’s increasing anger, which culminated in my hanging up on him.

The following week, when the developer re-raised his zoning issue before our commission, I again voted “no,” and the proposition failed. I never learned — and never asked — if the developer followed through on his threat to my father, but the cost to me was great because it took many months for my father to forgive me. I never reported the developer’s attempted coercion for the simple reason that I wanted to protect my father when there had been, as they say, “no harm, no foul.”

Should I have acted differently? Should I have informed the authorities as soon as my father spoke to me? And what would I tell them? Would I lie and omit his importuning that I should do as the developer demanded? Should I have abstained from again voting “no” the following week, which might have resulted in the result the developer demanded? The law may be clear that I should have implicated both developer and my father, but in real life it is another matter entirely.

The second experience I want to share happened while I was serving in the White House.

In Des Moines, I had a client, Jay Wells, who became a good friend. Jay lived in New York and was quite wealthy, something I definitely was not when I moved myself and my family to Washington to join President Lyndon Johnson’s White House staff.

Not surprisingly, my wife and three young children were far from thrilled to be uprooted from the place where all of us had been born, and move to the high-cost-of-living “East,” especially since I would be doing so at about 25% of the income I was making in Des Moines. In order to mollify them, I promised that our home would be as nice and our children’s schools would be as fine and we would enjoy as good a life as we were leaving behind. Nobody was thrilled by my promise, but, reluctantly, they went along with me.  

What my promise to them meant, of course, was that in Washington, we would be required to live on our savings, which was a severely limited nest egg that I knew would last us no more than three or four years in Washington.

As it happened, over drinks one evening, I had confided these facts to my client and friend, Jay Wells. And that is what led to my problem.

It began this way: One afternoon, I was sitting in my West Wing office when the White House operator told me that a Mr. Wells was in the downstairs waiting room and wished to see me. I invited him up. He greeted me warmly and explained that he was here as a member of a presidential commission. But, he added, he had another, more specific purpose in mind.

“As you probably know,” he began, “I have now accumulated more wealth than my family and I could spend in several lifetimes.” I began to congratulate him, but he held up his hand and continued. “On the other hand, I know that you are going broke working here, and that’s not right. So I am going to give you whatever money you need to come out even in your living expenses. It will be a gift — no strings attached.”

I immediately told him that I could not agree to that, that it would not be right for a host of reasons, and probably not legal to boot. Jay countered that he would make it a loan with no interest, payable once I was settled after leaving the White House. I refused that as well.

It was several weeks before I heard from Jay again. This time, he wanted to come to my office accompanied by Mike Feldman, the man who once had been White House counsel to both Kennedy and Johnson. I agreed, of course.  

Jay opened the conversation by telling me that he had retained Feldman to find a way to satisfy my objections to Jay’s proposals, and that Feldman had succeeded. Feldman then handed me a sheaf of papers. “What we have here is a charitable trust,” he explained. “Its purpose is to finance needy and deserving public servants such as yourself. Attached to it is my legal opinion that the endeavor is entirely proper.”

I shook my head. “I can’t do this,” I said. “Don’t you even want to read it?” Feldman asked, incredulous. “I don’t need to,” I said. “I am assuming that you are correct. I’m not arguing that. But I just can’t do it.”

There ensured a long, sometimes acrimonious discussion about my reasons. Essentially, these boiled down to my belief that as a presidential assistant, I should not be a party to anything — especially if it involved money — that, if it became public, would embarrass my boss, LBJ.

And so it was that by late 1968, I had exhausted my savings and it was imperative that I resign and return to the practice of law.  Fortunately for my conscience, President Johnson was not running for another term in office, and, in actuality, understood and encouraged my search for another job.

So what to make of these two relatively minor blips of moral pressure that I’ve described? For one thing, the rights and wrongs of them were not easy to discern, nor were the results without pain. Thus, to me they illustrate that, when sitting in judgment of our public servants, the rest of us should at times endeavor to be considerably more empathetic to their moral judgments than is our usual wont.


Sherwin Markman, a graduate of the Yale Law School, lives with his wife, Kathryn (Peggy) in Rock Hall, Maryland. He served as an assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, after which was a trial lawyer in Washington, D.C. He has published several books, including one dealing with the Electoral College. He has also taught and lectured about the American political system.