In recent years, the word apology has reverted in politics to its original meaning in Greek, which is “defense.” (Plato’s “Apologia” is an account of Socrates’ unsuccessful defense of himself in his trial.) Exhibit A is McCain, whose career-enhancing apologies are legion. A partial list includes apologizing for making a “confession” tape during his captivity by the North Vietnamese; for committing adultery during his first marriage; for his role in the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal; for a nasty joke about Chelsea Clinton; for comparing Newt Gingrich’s popularity to Jeffrey Dahmer’s, and, during the 2000 campaign, for calling Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell “agents of intolerance.” Whew!
But McCain’s reputation for using contrition to charm his way out of trouble might be catching up with him. When ABC News asked Vice President Cheney last week about McCain’s comments that Donald Rumsfeld was “perhaps the worst secretary of Defense ever,” Cheney replied archly: “John said some nasty things about me the other day, and then next time he saw me, ran over to me and apologized. Maybe he’ll apologize to Rumsfeld.” He didn’t.
But if he were truly a straight talker McCain would express regret for his consistently insincere praise of President Bush. For six years, Rumsfeld and Bush were joined at the hip. One can’t be bad and the other good. It may be that McCain is on the verge of losing the Apology Primary to John Edwards, whose showy contrition for his vote in favor of the war resolution is what has put Hillary on the hot seat.
Bill Clinton approved of his wife’s approach, perhaps because he, too, largely refrained from personal apologies until forced to by the Lewinsky scandal (“I have sinned”). But he built good will worldwide in part by repeatedly admitting historical error on the part of the United States, from U.S. support for the “dirty war” in Guatemala to the Tuskegee syphilis studies on blacks to the overthrow of the Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani. Most significantly, he went to Africa in 1998 and said the United States had been wrong to engage in the slave trade and that his administration had erred by failing to intervene more forcefully to prevent Rwandan genocide.
This marked a big change from George H.W. Bush, who said in 1988, “I will never apologize for the United States. I don’t care what the facts are,” after a U.S. ship mistakenly shot down an Iranian airliner, killing 290 civilians. Bush’s son has stuck to his father’s view. He famously couldn’t recall any mistakes he’d made as president and left apologies for the torture at Abu Ghraib to Rumsfeld and other underlings until King Abdullah of Jordan insisted he make amends personally. As the list of appallingly bad decisions by his administration lengthens, Bush often opts for the passive voice President Reagan favored during the Iran-contra scandal: “Mistakes were made.”
Does Hillary Clinton have the same instinct to maintain a façade of presidential infallibility? She’s known to apologize quickly in private after ruffling feathers. But with her polls showing that she receives high marks for strength and toughness, she is loathe to do anything in public that might be seen as wimpy or fulfilling unflattering stereotypes of women. Hillary finally admitted in December that if she’d known then what she knows now, she would have voted differently on the war resolution. To a normal person, that would mean she was wrong in 2002 to have entrusted Bush with a blank check. Instead, she chose to play the kind of semantic games that always spell trouble for the Clintons.
By doubling down—insisting that it’s wrong to admit she was wrong—Hillary may have set a bad precedent in the humility department. Should she win, she’ll need every tool at her disposal to convince the world that a new day has dawned, with the “humble foreign policy” promised by none other than George W. Bush in 2000. That’s the only way we can recover our global leadership and mobilize allies to confront emerging threats. It’s too late to apologize for this one, but the next time things go wrong, she could do worse than meld the McCain and Clinton styles of saying sorry into a persuasive defense of her own.
