the buck stops here

the buck stops here idiom used to say that one accepts a responsibility and will not try to give it to someone else

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Buck passing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Buck passing, or passing the buck, or sometimes (playing) the blame game, is the act of attributing to another person or group one's own responsibility. It is often used to refer to a strategy in power politics whereby a state tries to get another state to deter or fight an aggressor state while it remains on the sidelines.

Etymology
The expression is said to have originated from poker in which a marker or counter (such as a knife with a buckhorn handle during the American Frontier era) was used to indicate the person whose turn it was to deal. If the player did not wish to deal, the responsibility could be passed by the passing of the "buck," as the counter came to be called, to the next player.

In international relations
Passing the buck in international relations theory involves the tendency of nation-states to refuse to confront a growing threat in the hopes that another state will. According to John Mearsheimer, Thomas Christensen and Jack Snyder, buck passing is particularly common in multipolar international systems whereas it is rare in bipolar international systems. Examples of buck passing include:

The delay in forming a balancing coalition against Napoleon until 1813
The refusal of the United Kingdom, United States, France, and/or the Soviet Union to confront Nazi Germany effectively in the 1930s. With the Munich Agreement, France and the United Kingdom passed the buck to the Soviet Union, which then avoided armed confrontation by signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
The failure of European great powers to balance against Bismarck as he unified Germany.
Similarly, Mearsheimer argues that the delay of the Normandy Invasion shows that a buck passing state can shift the balance of power in its favor: "There is no question that the United States benefited greatly from delaying the Normandy invasion until late in the war, when both the German and the Soviet armies were battered and worn down. Not surprisingly, Joseph Stalin believed that the United Kingdom and the United States were purposely allowing Germany and the Soviet Union to bleed each other white, so that those offshore balancers [the United States and the United Kingdom] could dominate postwar Europe."

"The buck stops here"

At the recreation of the Truman Oval Office at the Truman Library in 1959, former President Truman poses by his old desk which has the famous "The Buck Stops Here" sign.
"The buck stops here" is a phrase that was popularized by U.S. President Harry S. Truman, who kept a sign with that phrase on his desk in the Oval Office. The phrase refers to the notion that the President has to make the decisions and accept the ultimate responsibility for those decisions. Truman received the sign as a gift from a prison warden who was also an avid poker player. It is also the motto of the U.S. Naval Aircraft Carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75).

President Jimmy Carter arranged to borrow the sign from the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum. Footage from Carter's "Address to the Nation on Energy" shows the sign on the desk during his administration.

The reverse of the sign reads, "I'm from Missouri." This is a reference to Truman's home state as well as Willard Duncan Vandiver's statement: "I'm from Missouri. You've got to show me."

On January 10, 2019, 19 days into a federal government shutdown, a reporter asked President Donald Trump if "the buck stops with you over this shutdown." Trump responded with "The buck stops with everybody."

In 2019, in his first speech as U.K. Prime Minister, Boris Johnson vowed to "take personal responsibility for the change" that he would advance, saying "The buck stops here."

In 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden said in his statement regarding his affirmation of the Afghanistan withdrawal, "The buck stops with me."

See also

Look up buck passing in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Button (poker) – Marker used to signal the dealer or last player in poker
Bystander effect – Social psychological theory
Command responsibility – Doctrine of hierarchical accountability
Outsourcing – Contracting formerly internal tasks to an external organization
Peter principle – Management concept by Laurence J. Peter
Scapegoat – Animal which is ritually burdened
Somebody else's problem – Dismissive figure of speech
Tragedy of the commons – Self-interests causing depletion of a shared resource
References
 John, Mearsheimer (2001). The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 157–58. ISBN 9780393076240.
 Mitford M. Mathews, ed., A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1951), I, pp. 198–99.
 Mearsheimer, John J. (2001). "Chapter 8". The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-34927-6.
 Christensen, Thomas; Jack Snyder (1990). "Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity" (PDF). International Organization. 44 (2): 137–68. doi:10.1017/S0020818300035232. S2CID 18700052. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 7, 2008. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
 John, Mearsheimer (2001). The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 160. ISBN 9780393076240.
 ""The Buck Stops Here" Desk sign". Truman Library.
 Jan R. Van Meter, Tippecanoe and Tyler Too: Famous Slogans and Catchphrases in American History.
 "'Buck Stops Here' To Be Sign of Carter". The New York Times. 6 February 1977. Retrieved 30 August 2016.
 President Jimmy Carter – Address to the Nation on Energy. YouTube. 28 March 2008. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21.
 "President Trump: 'The buck stops with everybody' | The Week".
 "Boris Johnson: First speech as PM in full". BBC News. 2019-07-24. Archived from the original on 2019-08-25.
 "New PM Johnson's arrival speech in Downing Street". Reuters. 2019-07-25. Archived from the original on 2021-08-17.
 "Remarks by President Biden on Afghanistan". White House. 2021-08-16. Archived from the original on 2021-08-17.
 "Full Transcript of President Biden's Remarks on Afghanistan". The New York Times. 2021-08-16. Archived from the original on 2021-08-17.

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To 'stop short of' something means to say or do something in a way that is not complete


A golf ball has stops short of the hole because it almost went in

Stop short of
Today’s expression is to “stop short of” something. If you stop short of something, you don’t quite do it. But you get really close. This is often used with statements. And we use it with statements when we almost say something definitively, but we don’t quite go there.

Last week, we talked about ESG investing, and the idea that investors like to put their money in companies that they think are doing good in the world, and they like to take their money away from companies that are not.

In the U.S., large universities have endowments. This is a big pot of money that accumulated from rich donors over the years. Universities invest their endowments, and they use the income from the investments to pay for their operations. That way, they can charge less tuition or offer richer amenities.

It’s a common thing for student protesters to want their universities to “divest” of companies that pollute the environment, make unhealthy food, or even exist in Israel, among other terrible things in the eyes of these students. The students are clamoring for “divestment,” which is like a boycott of companies that do these terrible things. The sentiment may, in some cases, be admirable, but student protesters are not known for their real-world, clear-eyed thinking. The university administrators are trying to make the most money from their investments and many would prefer not to listen to these protesters. Still, the universities don’t want to outright ignore their own students.

So I saw a story that said Princeton University would steer its investments away from 90 fossil fuel companies, but the university stopped short of using the word “divestment.” So the university is pulling its money out of these 90 companies, we think. They are doing what the students want.

But the university stopped short of using the word “divestment.” They went right up to the line. The protesters demand “divestment,” meaning selling stocks in companies that do bad things like produce energy. The university is doing that. So they are doing what the student protesters want, which is “divestment.” But the university is not using the word. They stopped short of using the word “divestment.”

Here’s another story. In Stockton, California, five people have been killed in three months and police suspect they are connected. So wait, is a serial killer on the loose? Should everyone be afraid? Police stopped short of saying there’s a serial killer roaming around Stockton, California.

But wait a second. Police said there have been five related murders. There’s nobody in custody. They haven’t solved the crimes. So…can we put two and two together and say there’s a serial killer on the loose? Maybe, but the police didn’t say that. The police stopped short of saying there’s a serial killer on the loose in Stockton. They’ll let you draw your own conclusions, but they didn’t quite say there’s a serial killer out there.

Russia’s war in Ukraine is not going well. Russia has not made the kinds of advances it has wanted. Then, Ukraine captured back a lot of cities it had lost early in the war. The Russian government can lie all it wants, but it can’t hide the basic truth that the war is not going well. So a lot of people in Russia are criticizing the war effort, but they are stopping short of criticizing Vladimir Putin.

People are criticizing the military leadership. They’re criticizing the strategy. They’re criticizing the execution. But they’re stopping short of criticizing the person at the very top. They don’t quite go there. They get right up to the line, but they don’t cross it.

So you can see the pattern here is all about statements and what you say. Princeton stopped short of “calling” its investment decisions “divestment.” Police stopped short of “saying” that a serial killer is on the loose. Critics stopped short of “criticizing” Vladimir Putin directly. All this is about statements.

And that is how I used it earlier today in the lesson about Magnus Carlsen , the number-one chess player. After the American teenager Hans Niemann beat Carlsen, Carlsen made it clear to the world that he thought Niemann had cheated. But he stopped short of directly accusing Niemann.

He made a big show of withdrawing from a game after making just one move and he immediately said that cheating needs to be addressed in the game. There is no doubt what he was thinking, but he still stopped short of directly making an accusation. That was in the first few weeks of the controversy. Carlsen did later release a statement that made the accusation explicitly. But in those first few weeks, he stopped short of making an accusation directly.

JR’s song of the Week
Today’s song of the week is “Champagne Supernova” by Oasis. You can try to interpret it if you want, but Noel Gallagher, who wrote the lyrics, said ten years after he wrote the song that he still hadn’t decided what it means. A supernova is an explosion of a star. So the lyrics invite you to imagine a “champagne supernova” in the sky.

This song was really popular when I was in high school. 1995 it came out. “Champagne Supernova” by Oasis is the song of the week, thanks to JR.

See you next time!
Do you remember your first cell phone number, by the way? I said at the beginning my first phone number started with 513. I think it was 513-255-something. I forget the ending now. Now that I’ve moved to Mexico, I’m going to get only the third cell phone number of my life. I’m going to keep my 312, my Chicago number, on Google Voice. I can’t give that up! It was my phone number for more than 15 years. That’s a long time! Of course I get spam calls on it every five minutes, but that’s another story.

That’s all for today’s lesson. Congratulations again on making it to the end of another Plain English lesson. This was number 513, so you can find the full lesson at PlainEnglish.com/513. See you back here on Monday for another one.