‘Mistakes Were Made.’ Echoes from Nixon Era

Ed Sills, Texas AFL-CIO communications director, finds an frighteningly familiar comparison between George W. Bush and Richard Nixon.

In reading today’s papers and Internet articles, I couldn’t help but reminisce about the Watergate Era, when the John Mitchells, Ron Zieglers and Richard Nixons of the world were purposely using the passive voice to conceal responsibility.

When someone says, “I erred,” that use of the active verb is a whole lot different in tone and substance from the passive construction, “Errors were made.” Editors torment young reporters every day over this issue of both style and substance. The passive voice has its place when a writer or speaker legitimately doesn’t know something, but its use becomes a question of character when a writer or speaker is trying to conceal something.

In the Austin American-Statesman, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales declared oxymoronically, “I believe in accountability,” followed immediately by the addition, “I acknowledge that mistakes were made here.” He goes on to
“accept that responsibility,” but in placing himself in charge of finding out “what went wrong here” when he was obviously in the middle of or directly responsible for that wrongdoing, he again shirks it.

George W. Bush picked up on the theme today in discussing the issue with a press corps that has followed his Latin American tour.

“Mistakes were made. And I’m frankly not happy about them,” Bush declares in an AP article today in which he says he is “upset” at the Justice Department scandal.

The rhetorical device moved to Texas in lightning fashion with Gov. Rick Perry’s spokesman’s quotation today in the Austin American-Statesman on the Texas Youth Commission scandal.

“Mistakes were made all across this agency, but we are going forward at this point,” Perry spokesman Ted Royer said. In this case, the passive voice dances away from the extent of Perry’s responsibility.

When the passive voice comes to the fore, it’s time to parse other statements to see what might really be true in the centrifuge of political spin.

For example,  Bush concedes in the AP article that he discussed the issue of U.S. attorneys with Gonzales.

“But I never brought up a specific case or gave him specific instructions,” Bush said. “What Al did and what the Justice Department did was appropriate. … What was mishandled was the explanation of the cases to the Congress.”

There are several ways to go at that, but Bush’s statement strikes me as likely malarkey. If Bush said, “Go ahead and do what you have to,” or “fire every U.S. attorney on the list,” it would indeed be factual that Bush discussed no “specific case” and made no “specific instructions,” but what Bush is saying would not be true in the sense of “the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth.”

Does anyone really think Bush told Gonzales, “Stop right there. If these members of Congress want to deep-six federal prosecutors over political prosecutions, they have crossed an ethics line and I don’t even want to hear about it. Now you go consider the cases on your ‘hit list’ on the merits and nothing else.”? It’s fatuous to suggest that Bush isn’t chin-deep in this one even if his fingerprints are absent and there are still enough swords for his aides to fall on.

Moreover, who can seriously believe at this juncture that the only inappropriate act in the politicization of the Justice Department’s prosecutorial discretion was the explanation given to Congress? That’s a classic dodge.

The way these folks are talking is evidence that there is a lot more beneath the surface to talk about.

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