The best lesson I learned during my formative years in journalism came from the editor at my first daily newspaper job, Doug Turner of the late Buffalo Courier-Express.

I had told him that the councilmen at the suburban town I was covering were trying to bully me out of writing a critical story. Turner, who had spent a career covering local- and state-level politicians, replied, “Bully them back. They’ll fold. These guys have no character.”

That moment came back to me a couple of weeks ago, thanks to an online post by Josh Marshall, founder and proprietor of the estimable blog talkingpointsmemo.com. Writing a few days after massive layoffs at the Washington Post, Marshall observed of the paper’s publisher, Will Lewis, and its owner, Jeff Bezos, that their failure “to even show up, literally or figuratively, on a day of devastating cuts epitomizes the profound lack of character and accountability that is so commonplace today within the American elite.”

There was that word again: “Character.”

Marshall put his finger on the flaw that exists among our business and government leaders. It’s the absence of character.

The quality can be hard to define precisely, but we know it when we see it, to paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s personal, subjective test for obscenity in a famous 1964 case. We can also know it by its absence.

Philosophers, ministers, judges, novelists and historians have all taken a crack at defining “character.” Often they search for it in some variety of moral truth (another quality that can be hard to define).

It can encompass steadfastness in the face of adversity, selflessness, self-sacrifice, honesty and integrity in one’s dealings with others. It doesn’t demand to be displayed in public. On the contrary, sometimes it unfolds out of the public eye; self-abnegation can be a reliable marker of character.

Literary masters have grappled with defining character. Tolstoy’s great novels, “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina,” are all about the journeys of his major figures from self-doubt and selfishness to a higher moral plane, not always successfully — he himself was so doubtful about whether he had accurately traced their trajectories that toward the end of his life he disavowed those great works as inadequate.

Faulkner found it in the patient, steadfast Dilsey of “The Sound and the Fury,” and in his greatest novel, “Absalom, Absalom!” he showed how its absence led inexorably to the ruin of Thomas Sutpen.

Character emerges in adversity. A most recent example comes from Ilia Malinin, the American figure skater whose hopes for an individual gold medal in the Olympics, which had been regarded as a preordained inevitability evaporated in a mistake-laden routine. Coming off the ice, Malinin forthrightly congratulated the winner, Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan, as if to communicate that Shaidorov won the prize from his own efforts, not from Malinin’s failure. The encounter signaled that Malinin will remain a major figure in the sport for years to come.

For us today, the term “character” allows us to avoid unprofitable debate over how to define the current administration. Is it “racist”? “Corrupt”? “Mendacious?” Applying those judgments invites partisan quibbling, because accusations of racism, corruption and lying can be colored by the eye of the beholder. But to say the administration can be defined as a lack of character—the term subsumes all those other judgments, and is much harder to question.

As Josh Marshall observed, abundant examples of the singular lack of character in our national leaders is vividly on display. Let’s take a look.

What’s a better way to describe Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi’s appearance before a House committee last week, during which she tried to evade questions about her failure to release documents related to Jeffrey Epstein’s dealings by finger-pointing at her questioners, keeping her back turned to the Epstein victims in the room behind her and citing the Dow Jones industrial average’s spike above 50,000 as a counterargument to her own inadequacies, as a singular lack of character?

When the preening Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth launched a campaign to demote the retired Navy captain and current Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a combat veteran and former astronaut, because of Kelly’s reminder to active servicemen that they need not follow illegal orders (a statement Hegseth himself has made) he was displaying singular lack of character — and underscoring Kelly’s own abundance of character.

The people of Minneapolis have displayed remarkable communal character in their relentless and peaceful battle against the government’s incursion into their private life. Who has displayed a lack of character? Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, her henchman Greg Bovino, and other defenders of this openly counterfeit campaign against illegal immigrants in their city.

Congress is a hive of low-character performance, full of individuals who have supplanted their responsibilities to the Constitution and the public interest with flagrant careerism.

Among those at the top of the list is Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician who cast the deciding vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services, despite Kennedy’s history of anti-vaccination activity. Cassidy has never adequately responded to my question about his support for Kennedy.

Facing a tough primary challenge, Cassidy showed recently that his lack of character extends beyond matters of healthcare regulation when he praised President Trump for taking down an overtly racist social media post attacking the Obamas, writing on X, bizarrely, that Trump has “made significant inroads with his outreach in the African American community…. His post sent the wrong message despite how it may have been originally intended.”

In business, who has shown a lack of character? There’s Apple CEO Tim Cook, who gifted Trump with a crystal plaque on a gold base as part of his effort to secure an exemption for Apple from Trump’s tariffs.

Count the corporate executives who have shown their lack of character by bowing to right-wing pressure to abandon their commitments to diversity, equality and inclusion — you know, “DEI.” A notable exception: Costco, which has maintained its diversity programs in the face of partisan backlash, and improved its bottom line as a result. That’s a reminder that one can do well while doing good, a lesson in the virtues of character.

“Our efforts at diversity, equity and inclusion remind and reinforce with everyone at our Company the importance of creating opportunities for all,” Costco said in its 2024 proxy statement, pushing back against a proposed shareholder resolution insinuating that Costco’s DEI program “holds litigation, reputational and financial risks to the Company, and therefore financial risks to shareholders.” (The resolution failed at Costco’s annual meeting last year.)

Then there are the directors and executives of pharmaceutical companies who price their products for maximal profits without caring much about the impact of unaffordability on the patients whose lives depend on those products. Back in the 2010s, for instance, executives at Gilead Sciences pondered how much to charge for Sovaldi, its miracle cure for hepatitis C.

As I reported at the time, they concluded Gilead could make a profit by charging $55,000 per 12-week treatment. But they decided to charge $84,000, which would deliver higher profits from fewer patients.

They refused to offer anything but minimal discounts to big insurers and Medicaid programs, even though they acknowledged that thousands of patients might have to go without the treatments. “Let’s not fold to advocacy pressure … whatever the headlines,” one top executive counseled his colleagues.

As a historical counterweight, consider Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine, who refused to patent it. Asked by Edward R. Murrow in 1955 who owned the rights to the polio vaccine, he replied, “The people, I would say. … There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”

Recent history provides us with numerous cases of individuals who have shown their character at the cost of their physical and financial well-being. Among the heroes of the civil rights movement in the 1960s were many who lost their lives in the effort, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers, or suffered severe physical injury, such as the late John Lewis.

I always admired former California Gov. Jerry Brown for his devotion to public service, a true avatar of character. In 2010, when he was running for his third gubernatorial term, his Republican challenger, the business magnate Meg Whitman, placed the firing of thousands of public employees to cut wasteful spending at the forefront of her platform.

Brown could have joined the chorus of critics of government “waste, fraud and abuse” — a perennially popular take for politicians — but he chose the opposite path. These people had devoted their lives to public service, Brown pointed out during a debate with Whitman. They had committed to teaching our children, cleaning up our air and water, holding dishonest businesses to account. That was an expression of character.

Brown, indeed, displayed character throughout his long political career: Fifteen years after serving two terms as governor, in 1998, he ran for mayor of Oakland, surely one of the most challenging and thankless jobs in California politics — and won. He never, ever apologized for being a “politician,” but saw politics as a noble calling.

The search for character among our politicians and business leaders could easily turn into a parlor game — draw a line down a piece of paper, with “Has Character” on one side and “No character” on the other, and compile two antipodean lists. But there’s more at stake than entertaining ourselves.

It was not always so. The 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence knew their expression of character placed them at mortal risk. That’s why the document ends with their mutual pledge of “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” If we are to preserve our republic and our economy, restoring men and women of character to our leadership is an indispensable goal.

Last spring, victims of the Los Angeles wildfires complained loudly and en masse over how State Farm General was handling their insurance claims, especially for smoke damage.

Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara urged them to lodge formal complaints with the department.

“That’s how we track and how we monitor, and we make sure that we follow through … make sure that those claims are being addressed,” he told several hundred fire victims in a Zoom forum in May.

Nearly a year later, however, many homeowners and their representatives say the promise was hollow. They voice mounting frustration over how the California Department of Insurance investigated their complaints about State Farm.

More than a dozen homeowners and their representatives told The Times that the department did little to resolve a wide range of complaints, or prevent new problems, in State Farm’s handling of their claims.

“Seventy percent of insured Eaton and Palisades fire survivors are facing delays and denials that are impeding their recovery,” said Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, citing a survey by the nonprofit Department of Angels. “That is evidence of the failure of this department to do its job.”

Policyholders shared complaints lodged against State Farm over denials to pay for the cleanup of fire toxins, rebuild estimates well below actual construction costs and delayed checks for living expenses. To the state they cited frequent turnover in adjusters and demands to sign legal papers agreeing to forego future reimbursement for personal items without itemized receipts.

Now, they said, State Farm is cutting off prepaid rentals and leases for fire victims who aren’t close to returning home.

Most of the fire victims said they were left in the dark about their cases, and were told to stop trying to communicate with their complaint handlers. Some said their cases were closed before their insurance disputes were settled.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s an actual, legitimate organization that’s meant to protect consumers,” said Len Kendall, who lost his home to the Pacific Palisades fire.

Kendall initially complained to the state about State Farm in July, citing delays in handling his total loss claim, dealing with multiple adjusters and struggles to get reimbursed for living expenses. Later he said he was told stop communicating with the state and to send his records “directly and solely” to State Farm.

“We’re told that they’re tracking information and speaking to the insurers, but we have no idea what is happening,” Kendall said. “ When it comes to the [insurance department], we’re all totally in the dark.”

A spokesperson for State Farm declined to address complaints from L.A. fire victims.

A representative for the state insurance department declined to comment on its handling of complaints against State Farm.

The agency did say it had “recovered” more than $210 million for fire victims “through its intervention and aggressive advocacy on these complaints.”

“We do our best to approach every wildfire survivor with empathy and understanding,” Michael Soller, spokesman for the insurance department, said late Wednesday. “Our goal is helping people recover fully, fairly, and quickly. We hold ourselves to the highest standards.”

He encouraged those with insurance disputes to contact the department. “We will do our best to expedite their claims,” he said.

The mistrust between fire victims and the department has been deepened by newly released records showing the department disciplined one its senior complaint handlers after she criticized State Farm over its claims handling, according to personnel records reviewed by The Times.

In a July letter to a State Farm case manager, Coleen Vandepas — a 32-year-veteran of the department who had previously been commended for her work on behalf of policyholders — accused the insurer of “shoddy” and “shameful” handling of an L.A. fire claim, including claiming it did not have test results within the insurer’s possession. She demanded the company apologize to its policyholder. In another policyholder’s case, she said State Farm engaged in a “pattern and practice” of delay.

Records show that days later, a State Farm lawyer called a top-level executive at the insurance department to complain about Vandepas’ statements.

Vandepas’ State Farm caseload was subsequently reassigned and she was docked 10% of her pay, according to personnel records. Her supervisors said Vandepas had made “accusatory” and “improper” remarks about State Farm, and cited a LinkedIn post State Farm had called attention to, in which she characterized insurance company threats to leave California as “wailing” by companies that wanted to “make huge amounts off the backs of the citizens of California.”

A state personnel board law judge reviewing the discipline called Vandepas’ remarks “rude and disparaging” and the full board this month rejected her appeal. A new appeal has been filed with the California Public Employee Relations Board, noting Vandepas was also protected as a union steward and was in part punished for raising internal workload issues.

The workplace action has angered advocates for wildfire victims.

“This sends a message to every single person who works at [the California Department of Insurance]: ‘You may be next,” said Chen, a former deputy mayor of Los Angeles.

Through its corporate media office in Illinois, State Farm declined to comment on the sanctions against Vandepas.

“We are not a party to the case in question,” the Illinois-based insurer said in a statement. “We have ongoing relationships with state regulators so we can best meet the needs of our customers.”

Investigations into State Farm

State Farm was in the midst of dropping some 72,000 policies in California, and seeking a $1.3-billion rate hike, when the Jan. 7, 2025, firestorm ravaged Los Angeles. The disaster killed 31, destroyed more than 16,000 structures, and left many others unable to return to their homes. As of November, the insurance department reported more than 42,000 home and commercial insurance claims.

By far, the largest share of those claims are with State Farm General, the California subsidiary of State Farm Mutual. A survey of about 2,300 five victims by the Department of Angels noted State Farm policyholders reported higher rates of claim denials, low estimates and other complaints than customers of other insurers.

Los Angeles County in November opened its own investigation into State Farm’s claims handling, demanding the insurer turn over reams of information, including company policy guides, training materials for handling fire and smoke claims, among other documents.

In June, Lara launched what he called an expedited market conduct exam of State Farm. The findings have yet to be released.

Lara rejected pressure from wildfire victim advocates to delay an interim 17% emergency hike until State Farm’s claims practices could be examined. He said they would be taken up in the full rate review. There has been no public hearings on the full hike. The case could be settled by the end of the month, state lawyers told a judge this week.

The insurance giant has a history of pushing strongly against regulators.

The company has refused to provide financial records sought by California actuaries attempting to judge the merit of its pending rate hike, including plans to drop another 11,000 policies, according to public rate filing records obtained by The Times.

The insurance department tracks complaints by disaster, as well as by insurer, but has rejected public record requests for that data. Its consumer complaint group has just 34 employees and hasn’t changed staffing levels despite the surge in wildfire claims in 2025, according to California payroll records.

Internal agency emails show a State Farm executive in May 2025 told Lara the insurer had received less than 310 policyholder complaints among 10,359 Los Angeles fire claims at the time. (Most of the cases reviewed by The Times were filed later.)

“SFG is not an outlier with respect to the number of complaints received in relation to the number of claims from the January 2025 wildfires,” State Farm General CEO Dan Krause wrote to Lara.

Insurance companies have 21 days to respond when a complaint is filed, and then state compliance officers can review the record for adherence with insurance law. They cannot make a determination of fault, or the size of an award. In a process kept confidential, they can challenge insurers with questions, asking them to explain their decisions. If they see violations, they cannot take action against an insurer. And they cannot tell the policyholder.

The insurance department contends the complaint process has resulted in the reversal of claim denials, increased payouts and agreements in individual cases to test for the toxic residues of wildfire smoke.

But interviews and records reviewed by The Times revealed inconsistencies in how wildfire disaster complaints were handled.

Some compliance officers told policyholders to stop sharing correspondence with their insurance companies or adjusters, saying they would read the claim files for themselves. Policyholders frustrated by the silence sought to file new complaints or have their cases reassigned, only to be refused.

After five months of sending protests about a “non-responsive” compliance officer, one fire victim was told by a bureau supervisor that she had two other alternatives to resolve her insurance dispute: seek a lawyer or file a lawsuit.

Three officers attempted to close policyholder cases even though the insurance claim remained in dispute. In one instance, a compliance officer referenced the wrong insurance company and the wrong issue being contested, letters shared with The Times show.

Andrew Wessels said State Farm prematurely closed this case after he challenged the insurers initial refusal to address toxic residues in his house left standing among the rubble of the Eaton fire, or its failure to pay living expenses.

For months, Wessels repeatedly wrote to alert his compliance officer that State Farm was making false claims. The state reviewer wrote back once to acknowledge receipt of further complaints he would add to the case file. Then in October the case officer tried to close the still-disputed State Farm claim, calling it “in stable condition.”

“The Department would find its task of regulating the insurance industry much more difficult without the help of consumers like you,” the closure letter said.

Wessels protested and his case was reopened. He continues to wrestle with State Farm over safety tests, delayed living expenses and ever-changing adjusters. He emails updates to his state insurance compliance officer.

“I just periodically send an email into oblivion, basically,” he said.