The Buck Stops Here
Tony Blair today told amassed reporters slavering over the “cash for peerages” scandal that the buck stops with him. For a man with whom the buck stops, Tony’s explanation of why his own party treasurer wasn’t aware of a few million in loans was somewhat disappointing…
Anyway: the famous expression harks from the days of President Harry Truman who had upon his desk a small sign saying “the buck stops here”. No more “passing the buck”, as the expression which presumably gave rise to this sign proclaims, because, when you’re in charge of the most powerful country in the World, there’s no-one to pass it to.
Unless you pass it to God, of course.
However, despite a passing familiarity with this idiom, I realised today that I didn’t know what the metaphorical buck actually is.
Presumably it wasn’t a male deer. Passing one of those would be at best an awkward affair, and in mating season could result in your being viciously gored by the animal’s antlers.
A male rabbit or hare, whilst slightly more compact and less vicious, would be more practical but scarcely better in metaphor terms. Is a male rabbit’s foot regarded as conferring responsibility as well as luck upon the owner?
A dollar bill, perhaps? Though again, as nice as it is to have one, why would a US President want 57p’s worth of paper to stop?
I’d always visualised this stopping buck as a small, black cylinder, like a large draught, being pushed across the table to the President. However, a moment’s thought made me realise that this was a puck. Damn.
Unless Truman was secretly a championship ice hockey goalkeeper with a post-modern approach to spelling, this theory wasn’t looking good either.
However, a little Googling showed my odd inclination to be correct; apparently, a buck is the counter passed around a poker table, for which purpose, back in the days of cowboys, a knife with a buckhorn handle was often used.
So, in fact, whilst metaphorically asserting both his authority and its accompanying responsibility with a catchy desk sign, Truman is literally admitting to being the end of a massive frontier gambling ring, conducted through a haze of tobacco smoke in the seedy Oval Office saloon.
The evolution of language is a confusing thing.