Will someone please tell me what’s so hard about saying “I’m sorry” when you’ve made a thoughtless remark and hurt someone’s feelings. Most of us try, with varying degrees of success, to teach our children to do this. From competition on the playground to sibling possessiveness, kids call each other names, threaten dire consequences- “If you don’t give that back right now!”- and resort to pushing and shoving along with screams of “Meeee first!”
So what happens when these kids grow up to be politicians? Surely their handlers will tell them never to liken their opponents to the world’s most notorious despots. But when they do, are they told never, never, never to apologize? And if forced to admit their blunder, stall the inevitable by “clarifying” their remarks. Generally, this solves little, except to delay the “regret” speech.
Sen. Richard Durbin is not the only American politician in recent months to have been forced to retract a comparison of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo with Nazis, Pol Pot, Soviet gulags and “mad regimes.” Durbin, who is well liked by colleagues on both sides of the aisle, was just the latest to use such inflated rhetoric. Senators Rick Santorum and Robert Byrd invoked Hitler and Nazi Germany in tirades against judicial filibusters, for Pete’s sake. Quite a stretch from filibusters to genocide.
And do they actually say they’re sorry? Well, almost never. Durbin prefaced his regrets to the Senate with, “Some may believe my remarks crossed the line.” That isn’t quite the same as admitting you breached an ethical boundary that should apply to all public discourse. Come on, guys, can’t you just say, “What was I thinking? I’m so sorry.”
Democrat Party Chair Howard Dean ranted about Republicans being a “white Christian party.” (He didn’t actually say the Nazi party represented that demographic). But conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh has been railing forever against “feminazis” (which calls attention not to his cause, but to his total lack of class). If you’re going to use the N word, you better have a laugh track and be at least as funny as Jerry Seinfeld and his “soup Nazi.”
Of course, unfortunate remarks are not limited to talk radio and Congress. The vice-president sticks his foot in it with appalling regularity, including his famous use of the F word on the Senate floor. And he never apologizes for anything. After saying the Iraq insurgency was in its last throes, painting a rose colored picture of the conflict, he clarified the remark by citing dictionary definitions such as: “throes can be a violent period.” Yeah? But does that explain “last” throes?
So it was with no provocation whatsoever that Karl Rove entered the fray with a gratuitous reference to 9/11 in a speech to New York conservatives, no less. Karl! In New York? Where the memory of 9/11 is sacrosanct? What were you thinking?
Granted, there’s probably no sharper political strategist on the planet, but Rove is no orator. His stumbling comparison of conservative and liberal reactions to the terrorist attack, saying conservatives saw the devastation and called for war while liberals called for indictments and “therapy” for the perpetrators, set everyone from New York’s two senators to the Anti Defamation League demanding an apology. Their response: It’s disgraceful to divide Americans for political gain. And the president should tell Rove to apologize. Oh, sure. Isn’t it Rove who tells the president what to say?
It must have been Rove himself who told Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld never, never, never to admit a mistake. Forget the facts. Paint the worst carnage, the clumsiest responses, with a rosy brush. Never mind that even Gen. John Abizaid admits “It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.” Though he says the marathon may be at the 21st line. Let’s see. That would be maybe three quarters of a really, really long race.
The Iraq insurgency is in its last throes. Yeah, right.
Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Kennedy says, “We are now in a seemingly intractable quagmire with no end in sight.” And Sen. Carl Levin, noting increased numbers of insurgents coming across the border into Iraq, calls Cheney’s assessment a “rose colored scenario” and not realistic. “It flies in the face of the testimony of our leaders.” Well, at least those are fairly civilized responses.
How refreshing it would be if we could ratchet down our political rhetoric several notches. We could start by putting Hitler and the N word off limits. Then our pols could be made to watch PBS (if it’s still alive) for “Questions to the Prime Minister” where Parliament grills Tony Blair. Our legislators could learn to call each other “my right honorable colleague from Massachusetts” or wherever, which certainly beats calling him or her a windbag. The Brits have this down to a science. How to skewer your opponent with wit and finesse. Show a little class.
Then we might send all our congressional leaders, along with Cheney and Rove, back to kindergarten for a day, where the teacher with a sweet voice can reprogram them to be able to say, “I’m sorry,” “My bad,” or even, “What was I thinking?”