Xavier Marquez unpacks the political psychology referred to as the “good Tsar” bias, when leaders escape blame for the disasters and mistakes that happen under their rule – anyone or anything but the ruler is held accountable:
The “good Tsar” bias does not incline people to say that the world is just, or to rationalize injustice as somehow deserved, only to deny that those leaders who are closely tied to the symbols of the nation (the Tsar, the Führer, the King, etc.) bear responsibility for bad outcomes in everyday life; that responsibility, instead, is assigned to subordinates. In this respect, the bias appears to be more closely related to what Dan Kahan and others have called “identity-protective cognition“: the closer a leader is tied to the symbols of the nation or group with whom they identify, and the closer people’s identification with the nation or group is, the more difficult it should be for them to accept that the leader is responsible for bad outcomes, since such acceptance threatens one’s identity, and the more likely it will be for them to displace that responsibility onto subordinates as a protective measure. And leaders, like Hitler, who are the focus of high-intensity rituals associated with big national occasions — plebiscitary elections, victories in war, even set-piece speeches on the occasion of good economic news — are precisely the sorts of leaders who become associated with important community symbols; indeed, in important ways, they come to symbolize the community, as long as the rituals are successful.
Dreher applies the theory to various aspects of contemporary American life:
We saw it in Catholic circles post-Boston, with the desperate attempts by some conservative Catholics to wall of John Paul II from the catastrophe. If you were reading certain Catholic blogs at the time, the rationalizations for John Paul’s inaction were legion. The Holy Father was kept in the dark by disloyal subordinates. The Holy Father was too sick to act. The Holy Father has a secret plan to deal with the scandal. Et cetera.
There is no theological reason for this strategy. Papal authority, even papal infallibility, does not depend on the capability of a pope to govern prudently. Dante, in the Commedia, exemplifies the perfectly Catholic position: loyalty to the Church and to its teachings, including the papacy, but unleashing hell on the corrupt popes. The “Good Pope bias” here was not really a theological defense — a theological defense was not strictly necessary — but a psychological one.
It doesn’t have to be focused on a person. You’ve probably heard the line, “conservatism cannot fail; it can only be failed” describing, from a liberal perspective, the way movement conservatives rationalize the failures of conservative government. For these people, corruption, bad judgment, or ineptitude on the part of elected conservative leaders doesn’t disprove conservative ideas or principles; it only means they weren’t really tried. The failed presidency of George W. Bush had nothing to do with the wrongness of conservative ideas, you see; it was because Bush wasn’t sufficiently or genuinely conservative. In this case, the Good Tsar is not a person, but an ideology.
The Dish 