Raising the Specter of Assassination

I've been thinking about this a lot today, and the truly offensive part of Hillary Clinton's comments about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy isn't that she made them.

Yes, we live in the age of the sound bite, where a single misstep or misstatement (or even a perfectly reasonable statement trimmed down until all shade of context is purged) can dog a candidate for years, and although I'm as guilty as the next person, when I think about it I try to forgive honest missteps. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are running on fumes, physically. They've been campaigning hard for months, I'm sure they're both perpetually overtired, and so that she might make this slip is understandable.

The truly offensive part is her non-apology.

Let's compare it to another recent stupid move, Mike Huckabee's ill-conceived off-the-cuff joke about someone aiming a gun at Barack Obama. It is a very real truth in both of these statements that Obama, just by being of some African descent, faces a much higher risk of assassination (or at least such attempts) than most non-black candidates. And when Huckabee made his comments to the NRA, within 24 hours he'd made the following statement:

During my speech at the NRA a loud noise backstage, that sounded like a chair falling, distracted the crowd and interrupted my speech. I made an off hand remark that was in no way intended to offend or disparage Sen. Obama. I apologize that my comments were offensive, that was never my intention.

That is an apology. He takes responsibility for his actions, and there's no wavering or wishy-washy language. Note in particular the declarative "I apologize that my comments were offensive".

Now let's look at Senator Clinton's non-apology. Recall that she is guilty not merely of raising the prospect of assassination when her opponent faces a much higher chance of it than she does, but also of raising a painful memory for the Kennedy family near the anniversary of that event and within a week of the awful diagnosis of Senator Kennedy's brain tumor. She responded thusly:

I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and in particular the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever.

This is the typical politician's non-apology. She doesn't admit that she did anything wrong, she doesn't apologize for it, she merely regrets that anyone found it offensive. And I fear that this may be literally true, that like my children when caught misbehaving, she's not sorry she did something wrong, only that it had repercussions for herself.

To me, the only appropriate response would have been to come out and say something like "Y'know, when you speak as much as we have to speak on the campaign trail, occasionally you'll say something stupid, and boy did I say something stupid. It was wrong, it was offensive, and I am terribly sorry for it."

Mike Huckabee was clear. His remarks were offensive, he knew they were offensive, and he apologized for making them.

Hillary Clinton was not. She references "if" her comment was offensive, as though she is still not sure, and apologizes for the offense taken, not for the statement itself.

This is just one more reason in a growing list why I see Hillary Clinton less as a good woman wanting to work for the country than as a self-serving power hungry politico who will do or say anything in order to win.

Liam.