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KINSLEY: 87 billion excuses, but no apologies
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87 billion excuses, but no apologies

Take your money, Mr. President, but at least come out and say you’re sorry

By Michael Kinsley
SLATE.COM

Sept. 11 — President Bush will get his $87 billion for a year’s worth of victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he will have to endure a lot of nyah-nyah-nyah and I-told-you-so along the way. He could have avoided all this irritation — and he is just the kind of man to find it incredibly irritating — with two little words in his TV address last Sunday evening: “I’m sorry.”

IF HE HAD acknowledged with a bit of grace what everyone assumes to be true — that the administration was blindsided by the postwar challenge in both these countries — this would have cut off a politically damaging debate that will now go on through the election campaign. And he would have won all sorts of brownie points for high-mindedness. Instead, he and his spokesfolk will be defending a fairly obvious untruth day after day through the election campaign.

Why do politicians so rarely apologize? Why in particular won’t they admit to being surprised by some development? Lack of scruples can’t explain it: Denying the obvious isn’t even good unscrupulous politics. For that reason, it is beyond spin. If spinning involves an indifference to truth, what’s going on here looks more like an actual preference for falsehood. The truth would be better politics, and the administration is fanning out to the talk shows to lie anyway.

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