Mom asked me to jump off my arguments against Nancy Pelosi, and, though I don't always defer, it seemed to me that the work was done: if the New York Times can see, plainly, just what I saw... at least I know I'm not crazy.
What's been interesting as the "Really... Nancy Pelosi? Really?" storyline has unfolded is the amount of excuse-making involved in trying to make the case for her. My friend Red ably noted that a number of the things I mentioned in my first post - her tenacity, her political savvy and exercise of power through fundraising - were probably things that could be seen as making her successful. I tend to agree. She wouldn't be where she is, or in a position to keep doing what she's done, if what she already did wasn't seen to work.
The excuse making on the left, though, is about the election: from a world-weary "the party in power always loses seats" to "the losses were all about the Democrats who were too conservative" or in more Republican-leaning districts... a large number of liberals, it seems, have found a way to deal with major losses in the House: they're not really losses... it's just inevitability.
Not that Repubicans are immune - I think they've spent the years since the 2006 losses in a similar dreamworld about just how bad their rejections were - but I don't think excuse making is any way to figure out how to win the next time around. The "new fatalism" among energetic liberals and progressives, in which the Democratic Party is either on a natural down cycle before the next upswing... or the more radicalized perspective of some further left types that the whole "Legacy Party" apparatus is falling apart... sort of obviates everyone from doing the work of coming up with the next big idea, or finding the next new leaders. We could... but, really, it will just end up the same, anyway. Or something.
What got me thinking about all this excuse making is, naturally, former President Bush. Just in time for the post election hangover, Mr. Bush's memoirs popped out to bookstores, and the President naturally embarked on the kind of things he likes to do least: interviews where people actually question his decisions, and having to justify a lot of what remains pretty indefensible.
Watching a few segments of the hourlong interview with Matt Lauer, I was struck, again, by how much of the kan's interviews turn into rounds of defensive "it's not my fault" type answers to questions that are hardly deep or probing; they can't be - neither his thinking, nor his speaking style, really lend themselves to developing deep insights. What you get is what you see... and what you get, most of the time, is "it wasn't my fault" or "I thought I was right then, and I still think I am." Self doubt... who needs it?
More than Iraq, more than 9/11, the place where this self-justification and excuse making just gets absurd is in the response to Hurricane Katrina. It's not that Bush won't admit to mistakes - even he seems to get, at this late date, that at least the appearance of things he was supposed to be handling looked bad - but even his admissions are tinged with a kind of "I couldn't do otherwise;" and if it looked bad... well, that's how the media works, isn't it?
It's not that I think Mr. Bush helped create, or more likely, sustain, a faith in never admitting mistakes and refusing to take responsibility for one's own failings... it's that I think the eight years of his disastrous Presidency, in addition to deeply lowering our expectations of nearly every leader we have, also made the self centered excuse making expected, hardly news. From Toyota to BP to all the various political leaders who've failed us in one way or another... it's fine to admit to mistakes. But after that, feel free to make all the excuses you want. We'd love to hear them. We probably won't believe them... but why would you expect anyone to do anything else?
There is such a thing as "inexcusable" and "indefensible"; more pointedly, there's a sense in which growing up and shouldering some responsibility for oneself is taking the excuse making off the table. It doesn't matter what the excuses for some things turn out to be - whether other people were mean, or no one understands you, or you did the best you could. Do better, don't worry about the others, and get back to work. No excuses. At least, don't expect a lot of things to change until we take the excuse making defenses off the table.
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