One of my favorite public officials of all time is the late Cyrus Vance, secretary of State during the Jimmy Carter years. He resigned after President Carter decided to go forward with the secret 1980 military operation to rescue the American hostages held in Iran.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a pacifist and I wish we could have not only snatched the hostages but also sufficiently encouraged the Iranian government about the total unacceptability of their ways, if you catch my drift.

Whether the plan was ill-conceived or was visited by the fickle finger of fate, the mission failed and eight brave Americans paid the ultimate price trying to free their countrymen in a foreign land. Courage defined.

After that mission failed, Vance demonstrated his own brand of pinstriped fortitude. The button-down, old-school diplomat quietly slipped away.

Having informed Carter earlier that he intended to quit whether the mission succeeded or not, Vance didn’t rant or rave. He just slipped away.

Relinquishing the power of the nation’s highest Cabinet post because he opposed the mission, Vance did what few in government have done before, and seemingly fewer have done since — resign as a matter of principle.

Without getting into the rightness or wrongness of his politics, worldview or the realities of his tug-of-war with Carter’s hawkish national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Vance episode teaches us one lasting truth.

Even though governmental officials might not be able to hold government sufficiently accountable in the manner they would sometimes like, they always have the option of holding themselves accountable to the dictates of their own conscience.

Not to elevate the position of press secretary to Cabinet level, but the recent revelations in the Scott McClellan book are an example of another kind of principle altogether. Keep quiet about your disagreements, take notes, write a book, cash in.

On a somewhat different level, I am convinced that Al Gore would now be finishing up his own two-term presidency if he had quit the administration immediately upon learning that President Clinton had lied to him about the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Accountability in government can take many forms, and I don’t mean to suggest that high- or even low-profile resignations are the be-all and end-all. Sometimes firings are in order too.

After eight years of the George Bush administration, I am astounded that we haven’t seen more resignations, firings or simple “slip-aways.”

A national security adviser who didn’t sufficiently focus the commander in chief’s attention on intelligence reports about a group that might be interested in flying planes into American skyscrapers? Secretaries of Defense and State who seemed to be making up the Iraq occupation plan in between rock-star news conferences? Maybe it’s me, but these might have been worthy nominees.

Despite my recurring doom and gloom about the lack of principle and accountability in this administration, I am beginning to think there just might be some rays of hope for the future of American governance.

I am talking, of course, about Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s recent firing of the two top military and civilian officials at the Air Force.

After a B-52 bomber was inadvertently loaded with armed nuclear warheads and flown from North Dakota to Louisiana, and then after it took a year and a half to discover that, instead of helicopter batteries, we sent four nuclear warhead nose cone fuses to Taiwan, Gates decided heads would roll.

Think about it. Gates canned the two top officials in the Air Force because a guy in the hangar made a stupid mistake. Pretty tough stuff.

But, with Gates’s action, everyone in the military, home and abroad, now knows the captain-of-the-ship theory lives.

Despite his relatively small footprint, Gates’s decision will make a huge indentation in military culture. Gates is large and in charge — an adult SecDef who is willing to make tough decisions and hold people accountable, no matter where the chips fall.

Both John McCain and Barack Obama ought to put this guy on the VP short list quickly. Or, better yet, come Jan. 20, 2009, no matter who wins the election, keep Gates right where he is.

Ten-hut! An adult is now on deck.

You can reach Jim Mills at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it