a new direction, perhaps a significant increase in the number of troops.
But no one suggested that George W. Bush would utter the words polls indicate so many Americans believe he should: “I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”
It’s tempting to think that the utter laughability of that notion reflects the personality of a chief executive known more for digging in his heels than holding out his hand. But it may say as much about power, the presidency and even masculinity, American style.
Historians come up pretty empty when asked to recall public admissions of error from the Oval Office. Richard Pious, the Barnard professor who wrote “The American Presidency,” cites John F. Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs as the “rare example of a president who took full responsibility.” Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose book on Lincoln, “Team of Rivals,” was the one President Bush chose as his favorite this year, says that in a letter to Ulysses S. Grant after the fall of Vicksburg, Lincoln admitted that he’d doubted his general’s strategy. “I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment,” he wrote, “that you were right and I was wrong.”
It’s difficult to imagine any modern American president expressing error in such an overt fashion, perhaps because instead of a personal communication his admission would become the stuff of pundit second-guessing. And today the apology has also been devalued by a flood of cheap contrition from actors, comedians, athletes and rock stars for everything from drunken driving to bigoted outbursts. Those exercises have more to do with rehabilitation than regret, and it shows. “I’m sorry I offended other people” winds up putting the burden on the distressed rather than the distressor. The classic “mistakes were made” suggests that error is a naturally occurring event, like a sleet storm, rather than a matter of personal failing.
But in terms of presidential admissions, Deborah Tannen, the Georgetown professor who has written a raft of popular books on what we say and why, says it would be a mistake to overlook how deeply ingrained resistance to admitting mistakes is in the American male. “The public persona of authority is hypermasculine,” Tannen says. “The masculine approach in our culture is never to apologize because it indicates weakness.”
The sociolinguist says a true apology has four parts: admitting fault, showing remorse, acknowledging damage and indicating how it will be repaired. That scenario is perfect for confronting the debacle of Iraq–for either side. Those who believe the war was wrong would love to hear the president admit that it was based on faulty intelligence, that he regrets the invasion, that he recognizes that thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died as a result, and that he intends to cease combat operations as soon as possible. And those who think the war was merely prosecuted incorrectly would like a statement that the threat from the insurgency was underestimated, that the president regrets that he didn’t listen to those who said so from the beginning, that the conflict has been prolonged because of that, and that he will now send more troops as a response.
In their informative primer on the war, “Out of Iraq,” George McGovern and William Polk begin with this stark sentence: “Events have proven that the U.S. government’s decision to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003 was a calamitous mistake.” Poll figures show that the majority of Americans agree. But the coauthors note, “Alien to Americans is the idea of making amends for our actions; we do not like ever to admit that we have been wrong.”
But at times of schism, presidents should mirror our best impulses, not our commonplace ones. And if power means never having to say you’re sorry, then the powerful miss the opportunity to truly lead. As Goodwin notes, “They fear it suggests weakness to acknowledge error when in fact it suggests strength, self-confidence and the ability to learn and grow.” In Tannen’s terms, language offers two paths, dominance and connection. “When you say you made a mistake, you are creating a connection,” she notes.
In this case, you would also be stating the obvious. Over the nearly four years of the conflict in Iraq, more and more Americans have come to realize that significant errors were at the root of the entire enterprise. The man who must take responsibility for those errors ought to acknowledge them rather than fall back on talking points that are as tinny as an empty can. Of changing his mind, Lincoln once said something along the lines of hoping he was smarter today than he was yesterday. That’s certainly true of the American people on Iraq. It would be good to learn that it’s true of their leader as well.
