Professional Apologists

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Unless you live under a rock (and even then) you’ve heard/seen Hillary Clinton’s latest gaffe, regarding being shot at while in Bosnia in 1996. You can read the story from a professional news organization, on the off chance that you do live under a rock.

Nowadays, making a gaffe like that requires some sort of mea culpa, which Hillary most certainly did deliver (it’s in the above article, and you can judge for yourself whether it’s good enough). A single apology just isn’t good enough in today’s society. We need, or rather demand, constant apologies and explanations.

Since it would be unseemly for a candidate to appear to be constantly on the defensive, apologizing over and over for the same mistake, they generally have professional apologists, who run around to various news outlets, and explain (or rather defend) the gaffe and the candidate. While one can understand the reason, their stance often strains credulity.

Before I introduce the object of this specific post, let me share one of the more credible explanations of how Hillary came to mis-remember an incident like being shot at! One of her detractors was actually quite kind (and in my opinion quite sincere!) in saying the following (I’m paraphrasing heavily!):

Since 1996, Hillary has likely told this story hundreds of times, perhaps even thousands of times. Each time, it got just a little bit better, and became that much more ingrained in her psyche. By the end of these many tellings, she was getting shot at, possibly even believing it to the point where she could have easily passed a lie detector test!

Not terribly implausible, even though getting shot at isn’t something you’re all that likely to really forget. Especially, when you are reminded by a reporter that Sinbad repudiated your story, and you can’t back off even a little once your memory is jogged…

OK, back to today’s story. Last night, one of Hillary’s professional apologists was on TV, along with Retired Colonel Hunt. The apologist was Lanny Davis. Lanny is extremely intelligent, and generally extremely professional. By that I mean that he’s firm, but polite, rather than an attack dog (like some are).

Last night, he crossed two lines that he rarely crosses, which shows just how far the apologist part of their roles is supposed to go! First, he simply gave up all of his intelligence (and therefore his credibility) when he said the following:

A journalist traveling with Senator Clinton in 1996 in Bosnia wrote that there were snipers there to protect the group.

His (apparent) claim was that:

• There were snipers there (a word Hillary might have used at one time!)
• She was right to remember it as dangerous!

Let me back up. Colonel Hunt was there that trip as well. He was reporting directly to the commander in charge (an Admiral). He reported (before Lanny made the above comments) that there was a brigade of soldiers there. There were fighter jets patrolling the air. There were 40 tanks, and yes, there were sharp-shooters as well.

His conclusion (different than Lanny’s) was that Mrs. Clinton (she wasn’t a Senator at the time) was reasonably safe (as all of the videos clearly show), and that by dramatizing the event, she was insulting the soldiers that were there to ensure her safety (something they obviously did well).

I don’t agree that she was insulting them (in any way!), though I do agree that it could come across that way to someone who was charged with protecting her.

Lanny’s response seems to imply that because we (the American Army!) had snipers on the ground, Hillary was somehow correct in her recollection that she was under fire from snipers. Come on, this doesn’t even pass the remotest of smell tests, and it’s embarrassing to have him try to parse words to recharacterize her previous statements.

The second way that he disappointed last night was that he lost his cool (rare for him) and essentially called Colonel Hunt a liar (not exactly that straightforwardly, but in a cowardly back-handed way), for suggesting that Hillary was never fired upon. Huh? She too admits she wasn’t fired upon. Video proves she wasn’t fired upon, but somehow, Colonel Hunt is lying that she wasn’t fired upon (or that she didn’t honestly believe that she was!).

That would be bad enough, but it never ends badly enough with professional apologists! There is another tactic that is sickening (both sides do it, 100% of the time that they are apologizing for someone else). They try to use moral equivalences to soften the gaffe in question.

In other words, if he did something similar, and he’s still allowed to run, be in office, live, breathe, then why are we spending any time talking about my candidate’s problem?

It simply sickens me 100%, no matter who uses it. It’s one of the reasons that our society has fallen into such disrepair. If someone else does something wrong, that’s justification for us to do it too, no?

No!

But, when the moral equivalences simply don’t line up, it’s significantly worse. Many people correctly cited the lack of equivalence of Barack Obama comparing Reverend Wright’s statements with those of Geraldine Ferraro or his grandmother.

Lanny Davis crossed that line way worse last night. He actually had the nerve to liken McCain’s gaffe regarding Iranian training of Al Qaeda (as opposed to generic terrorists), which got corrected (by Joseph Lieberman, instantly!), with Hillary’s gaffe about getting shot at!

Wow! Mis-speaking in an impromptu interview, and being corrected (and accepting the correction immediately!) is equivalent to telling about something that supposedly happened directly to you, and then defying people when they claim that it didn’t happen (until the video comes out!) is equivalent?

No. What would be equivalent would be if it now came out that John McCain never spent any time as a prisoner of war. If, in fact, he mis-remembered the incident and now had to admit that, because definitive video just surfaced.

Shame on you Lanny Davis, and shame on all professional apologists, on both sides!