In “A Hot Political Trend: Saying Sorry.“ (June 23), U.S. News’ Kenneth Walsh discusses what he perceives to be a trend that “has gone generally unnoticed in the presidential campaign.“ The trend is that of “saying sorry.“
According to Walsh:
Politicians of all stripes are acknowledging mistakes more than ever. They seem to have finally realized that it’s not a cardinal sin to say you’re sorry. In fact, even candidates for president who don’t like to admit goofing up have finally realized that taking responsibility isn’t a bad thing.
To support his point, Walsh recounts recent apologies, or “mea culpas” by such well-known politicians as:
Vice President Cheney’s apology for insulting West Virginians with his incest joke.
Mike Huckabee’s apology to “Mormon Mitt Romney after questioning his religion’s theology in an insulting way.”
Obama’s apology for calling small-town people “bitter.”
John McCain’s apology for voting in 1983 against creating a Martin Luther King Day.
Hillary Clinton’s apologies for “saying, falsely, that she had escaped sniper fire during a visit to Bosnia in 1996 ,“and for “invoking the memory of Robert Kennedy’s assassination to illustrate her point that running for president can be unpredictable.”
There are others.
Walsh concludes by saying,
Maybe the candidates are just getting caught in more gaffes in the 24-hour news cycle. Maybe everyone is more sensitive about everything. Whatever the reason, the pols are taking responsibility for their mistakes. And that’s a good thing.
Now, about that war in Iraq.
Well, if Mr. Walsh‘s publishing deadline had been able to catch up with the following days’ news cycle (or vice-versa), he might have been able to include in his list one of the biggest mea culpas in recent history: “about that war in Iraq.”
We all know now, how President Bush handled questions about the war in Iraq during his recent tour of Europe. In an interview during his trip he said “I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric,” “Sometimes my rhetoric was a little—was misunderstood. I mean, I can remember saying, you know, ‘dead or alive,’ which sent … signals that could be easily misinterpreted.”
This is about the closest Bush has come to admitting that he was wrong on anything, or to apologizing about anything. His admission of being almost wrong and his “almost apology” were definitely not about taking our country into an unnecessary and disastrous war, but about the words he used to fan the flames of war.
On second thought, this almost apology could not have been added to Walsh’s list of mea culpas. An almost apology about the rhetoric used to start a war under false pretenses does not count towards: “Now, about that war in Iraq.” For that, Walsh may have to wait a long, long time…
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.