Not Always An Apology



Apologizing has become routine in American politics.       What are commonly, if incorrectly, termed "apologies" are sincere to varying degrees.   They range from an admission of wrongdoing to a proclamation that he/she is sorry if "anyone" was "offended."

Most of these fall somewhere between a full statement of regret and a complete avoidance of any responsibility.     Still, there are discernible differences, as demonstrated by two "apologies" heard this week.    

In February, then-active candidate Rick Santorum, reacting to the President's recommendation that everyone pursue post-high school education or training of some kind, told a tea party audience in Troy, Michigan

Not all folks are gifted in the same way.       Some people have incredible gifts with their hands. Some people have incredible gifts and ... want to work out there making things. President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob.

Having advocated roughly what the President had, Santorum was roundly criticized for calling the President of the United States a snob, grossly misinterpreting the President's words, or allegedly demonstrating an insufficient regard for higher education.     However, recently this exchange occurred on Piers Morgan's CNN talk show:

MORGAN: Of all those, which is the one you most regret looking back?
SANTORUM: The snob one, because I misread his comment. I thought he said everybody should go to college. And it was…what I had read was someone’s interpretation of what—and I just used that as a fact. That it was factually incorrect.   That's the one I feel bad about.  

Santorum said "I misread his comment" and he repeated as fact something which was "factually incorrect."      One tipoff to Santorum's sincerity was his decision not to  emphasize (or even mention) the impact upon others.     A speaker can be wrong even if no one took personal offense and emphasizing the feelings of others is a slick way of avoiding admitting that one simply made a mistake.    It rests the virtue of a statement not on one's actions but on the response of others to it.  

Santorum displayed another near-sure sign of a genuine apology.       Paradoxically, it lay in his avoidance of the word "apology."    Using the term is a sure way of getting the media to refer to a statement as an apology without the speaker ever admitting to having done anything wrong.

And so it is with Monica Crowley.        Hearing that Sandra Fluke is engaged, President Nixon's speechwriter on Thursday tweeted "To a man? 'Sandra Fluke Announces Engagement.'"      Later that day, responding to criticism, the ever-classy Crowley tweeted "I love exposing the Left's total lack of a sense of humor."
     
Later yet on Thursday, Crowley tweeted  "Regret my tweeted question caused a stir.    I certainly & unequivocally apologize to Sandra & anyone else I offended. Not my intention.”

Worse yet, Mediaite- seriously- contended in so doing Crowley had "apologized."        Worse yet still, the Center for American Progress, via ThinkProgress, reported she "has issued an apology to Sandra Fluke."

Hardly.      The twit regrets only the reaction to her initial tweet- that it "caused a stir."    She doesn't even acknowledge anyone specifically who could have been offended, choosing instead to offer the generic, meaningless "anyone else I offended."     Crowley thus refused to acknowledge anyone who might have been offended, nor that there was any reason someone could have been offended.    While her intention to was to ridicule, offending someone in the process was an additional benefit.     It would be similar to  "Sorry I ran you over with my car.   Not my intention."   Or better yet, "I apologize to anyone I might have run over.    Not my intention."

While the media rushes to label virtually any follow-up to an offensive remark an "apology," actual retractions are relatively rare.     Consequently, these few statements of sincere regret ought to be applauded and recognized as unusual demonstrations of integrity by public figures.




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We Have Met The Mark And He Is Us


In her famous video message produced in response to the shooting in Tucson, Sarah Palin famously claimed

But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.

Not only was she, nor anyone on the right, to be held accountable for vitriolic rhetoric, the actions of Jared Loughner were prompted by the left- those who "manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn."

The biggest supporter- inarguably (and figuratively)- of the ex-Governor, Rush Limbaugh, agreed, in his characteristically rambling style:

I mean we could just as easily say that the left is responsible for Tucson and events like Tucson because it is the left which routinely, regularly, continually agitates, abuses, punishes, fines, name calls. The left creates this environment in which the individual is smothered, treated as worthless and degraded. The left is constantly telling us how horrible we are, how horrible our country is. The left's leader runs around the world apologizing for this country, how unfair and unjust our economic system is; how our major corporations are out to kill you, to screw you, to rip you off. They create this environment of pessimism, of self-hate and loathing, desperation. They turn citizen against citizen, blacks against whites, men against women, Hispanics against whoever, you name it. People are constantly at war with each other. How can you been proud of yourself when you're told you don't sacrifice enough for your state, you're not paying enough taxes, you're not giving enough to the cause or that your ancestors committed some horrible offense. Or, if you're unable to succeed, it's because of the Founders and the inherent racism and unfairness of your culture and our Constitution, or capitalism.

The accomplished psychiatrist, Dr. Limbaugh, alleges that Loughner started shooting because "of pessimism, self-hate, and loathing, desperation" brought about by being told by liberals that corporations are evil. Or because our President has been "running around the world apologizing for this country" and "turning citizen against citizen," pausing, presumably, to say in Tucson

And I believe that, for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.

Without referring specifically to Palin or Limbaugh, Michael Kinsley observes

In the week since the Tucson, Ariz., massacre, pleas for “civility” have turned into accusations of incivility, and the whole, useful discussion of “civility” versus “vitriol” has turned into the usual argument over competitive victimhood. The vast right-wing conspiracy has played President Barack Obama like a violin.

And they’ve done a pretty good job of messing with the heads of the liberal media as well. As a result, anyone who even raises the issue of who might be responsible, or more responsible, for the “atmosphere of vitriol” in which we conduct our politics is guilty of contributing to it. In just a few days, it has become the height of political incorrectness to suggest there might be any connection between the voices on right-wing talk radio and the voices in Jared Lee Loughner’s head.

Quoting Kinsley, Open Left's Paul Rosenberg concludes "Moral: Empathy is for suckers, and Obama is the biggest of them all."

But whether Barack Obama has been "played like a violin" or is the "biggest sucker of them all" is questionable. President Obama's favorability rating, admittedly already on the rise, soared after his speech at the memorial service. The American people, clearly, like the President- really, any President- in his role as Father-In-Chief. And when Obama absolves the purveyors of incendiary political rhetoric of any responsibility and calls for civility, conservatives like Charles Krauthammer, Pat Buchanan, and Monica Crowley applaud, lending a bipartisan veneer to the Obama presidency.

President Obama blames all equally- or, rather, no one. He asserted

....at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do, it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we're talking with each other in a way that -- that heals, not in a way that wounds.

But Kinsley notes

This sounds like a noble sentiment. But who is to blame for what ails the world if not those who think differently? If those who think the same as you are responsible, it’s time to start thinking differently yourself.

That, understandably, Obama will not do. But his comments comfort those whose words have been not only hostile, but vitriolic or even incendiary. And they allow the defenders of those individuals to suggest that it is the critics of violent rhetoric who are, in Limbaugh's words, "responsible for Tucson and events like Tucson."

Meanwhile, Obama stays above the fray, balanced but hardly fair or accurate. As the far right defends the further right, liberals and Obama's Democratic colleagues are increasingly marginalized. Barack Obama, then, is not the sucker, or played like a violin; the description better applies to his loyal supporters, who are being sacrificed to further his pursuit of a second term.

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Sound And Fury, Signifiying Deceit

Does it really matter to some Republicans if what they are saying is true? That's only a rhetorical question as Monica Crowley demonstrated (video via Media Matters immediately below) on the March 7, 2010 edition of the syndicated The McLaughlin Group.




She actually said of President Obama "economically, nothing he has done has worked- the stimulus, the jobs bill, nothing has worked." There is only one problem: the CBO begs to differ. ABC's Jake Tapper quotes colleague Matthew Jaffe noting

During the fourth quarter of 2009, the stimulus added “between 1.0 million and 2.1 million to the number of workers employed in the United States,” the CBO said.

The stimulus also boosted the country’s economic growth by 1.5 to 3.5 percent during the time period and lowered the nation’s unemployment rate by between 0.5 and 1.1 percentage points.

In the report, the CBO noted that economic growth in 2009 was worse than they had predicted at the time that the stimulus was enacted, but that was due to a weaker economy than originally expected, rather than any failings of the stimulus....

The CBO also said that in the fourth quarter the stimulus package increased the number of full-time jobs by between 1.4 and 3 million compared to the number of jobs that would have existed without the package.

(CBO report, in pdf, is here; excerpt on page 8.)

Of course, if Crowley was referring to the insufficiency of the stimulus package she was correct. Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on December 7, 2008 remarked on CBS' Face The Nation

I'd like to see it bigger. I understand that there's difficulty in actually spending that much money, and I--they're also afraid of the--of the T word. They're afraid of a trillion dollar for the two-year number. But you know, the back of my envelope says it takes roughly 200 billion a year to cut the unemployment rate by 1 percent from what it would otherwise be. In the absence of this program, we could very easily be looking at a 10 percent unemployment rate. So you do the math and you say, you know, even these enormous numbers we're hearing about are probably enough to mitigate but by no means to reverse the slump we're heading into. So this is--you know, I--they're thinking about it straight.

Less than two months later, on February 7, 2009 Krugman would blog "to appease the centrists, a plan that was already too small and too focused on ineffective tax cuts has been made significantly smaller, and even more focused on tax cuts.... The plan should have been at least 50% larger."

Similarly, economist Dean Baker on January 25 2009 wrote

The $825 billion (@ 2.8 percent of GDP) two-year stimulus package that he put together with Congress is a good start.

The main features of the bill are very much on the right track. The biggest problem is that it should be larger. This downturn is so severe that this package may not be sufficient to offset even half of its impact.

Economist James Galbraith also believed the stimulus was too small and commented

The choice is between an active program, running up debt while creating jobs and rebuilding America, or a passive program, running up debt because revenues collapse, because the population has to be maintained on the dole, and because the Treasury wishes, for no constructive reason, to rescue the big bankers and make them whole.

This could be why,as Tapper wrote

“Economic output and employment in 2009 were lower than CBO had projected at the time of enactment,” the CBO stated. “But in CBO’s judgment, that outcome reflects greater-than-projected weakness in the underlying economy rather than lower-than-expected effects” of the stimulus package.

The stimulus package was too small- but its enactment clearly steered the country in the right direction. Unfortunately, the underlying economy was worse than President Obama calculated and far worse than Republicans like Crowley imagined (or were willing to admit).

That is a huge difference from "nothing has worked." But then, to Republicans like Crowley, mouthing a falsehood over and over is infinitely more satisfying than leveling with your audience.