That shitty feeling that arose then, it will never go away and you did it† Many songs about heartbreak are about fresh pain or how the interpreter is now really on top of it. The 22-year-old Meau quite practically sings that closing is not possible, even now that she has been away from the other person for a while. And she does not look for the cause in her own shortcomings, but in the actions of that other person, a – my summary – manipulative narcissist. The huge success of you did that, early this year, may be because of that comforting clarity. No excuses for wrongdoing, the recognition that full recovery is impossible and responsibility where it belongs.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem should have listened better to Meau.
The chair of the Dutch Safety Board complains that the cabinet has only embraced its recommendations from an evaluation of the first corona period in word and not put into practice† While we are already in the next wave of contamination and a dark scenario is certainly not excluded.
In this newspaper, Dijsselbloem said striking things: the cabinet has not reflected seriously and Prime Minister Rutte has conjured himself up when it came to intended improvements.
Only Dijsselbloem can take that to heart. He is a managerial insider who delivered a technocratic report on execution. This is partly due to the limitation of its function: the government probably knew what it was doing when it outsourced the evaluation to a body that should learn lessons for safety and not deal with guilt and liability. But the fact that Dijsselbloem never seriously discusses presuppositions under the corona approach is his own choice and nobody had asked him to warn about an alleged culture of accountability before he came up with his research.
It sounds so beautiful that it should not be about rolling heads but about learning for the future. The tricky part is that major issues are never just about organizational charts, resources and powers, but always primarily about values. It was not just ‘pandemic preparedness’ that was being put to the test by Covid-19, but above all the worldview and associated reflexes of those in power. How much did they value human life and quality of life? How important did they think it was to get through the crisis with the Netherlands as a whole instead of dividing it up into representatives of partial interests? What relationship did they see between government and citizens?
Then you can now get excited that Prime Minister Rutte and Minister Kuipers are shrugging off exactly the formal responsibilities that you had just written that they had to take on, but that seems like a time to wake up: they want those responsibilities not. Because their philosophy is that everyone has to figure it out for themselves and because it doesn’t suit them politically.
And while the willingness to learn is genuine—perhaps not at the top political level or the most visible advisers, but among implementers—most of us find admitting mistakes much harder than we realize. Not just giving in to the outside, to restore relationships, but deep down, inside. This is accompanied by guilt, shame and impaired self-confidence. With the corona approach you are talking about people who have often been working for years, under extreme circumstances. And about decisions with gigantic repercussions: more or less social disruption, more or fewer deaths. If you then say: ‘we don’t look at anyone specifically, but everyone learn your lesson’, you are asking the impossible. No wonder that the mantra ‘pointing no blame’ is mainly used to thoroughly clean streets.
Where can this learning capacity in public administration be found? From the illegal wealth tax to the chaotic asylum reception, from the neglected army to the earthquake damage in Groningen and from the nitrogen drama to the allowance scandal: the Netherlands is currently winding itself up in recovery operations. So much so that any ambitions for the future have disappeared behind the horizon. But learning is more than panicking emergency bandages. And for that learning the conditions are always lacking: facing mistakes without excuses, acknowledging that complete repair is impossible and placing responsibility where it belongs. Just say Meau’s Law.
More accurate evaluations about the corona crisis will only appear in decades, I fear. The parliamentary inquiry will also be too close. Besides, how do you judge such a profoundly political issue with a committee that includes even the parallel universe of the fascists? is represented†
No, it’s much easier said than done, learning lessons. Assigning blame is insufficient, and also far from ideal, but wouldn’t it be indispensable to have some effect in the short term? Determine who did what – or failed to do so – and with what consequences. Let there be a swing. And hope that the next team will start with a fresh look and know: we will certainly not do it that way.
In short, sometimes just say: ‘You did that.’ We citizens too, by the way, in elections.
Why do leaders make the same mistakes so often? Because they do not look for their own wrong, explains economist Marilieke Engbers, who listened in dozens of times like a fly on the wall at the top of administrative Netherlands. She speaks with Kustaw Bessems in the Volkskrant podcast Rudderless: