True Confessions
Eric Engberg takes a look at what might have been said if some of our revered former presidents spoke as frankly as John McCain did on the Confederate flag controversy.
Vanquished candidates for their party's presidential nomination are supposed to go back to their old jobs and hope that the guy who beat them will name them to his cabinet. John McCain, who at times seems to be putting himself through an Outward Bound course on political morality, would have none of that. Back in South Carolina the other day, he indicted himself for deception and pandering when he ducked the issue of whether the Confederate flag should fly over the state's capitol.
In self-flagellating language that amazed hardened political reporters, Johnny Mac did a full mea culpa on why he had failed to weigh in against the Stars and Bars. "I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary. So I chose to compromise my principals. I broke my promise to always tell the truth." The commentators had to break out their thesauruses to find language for his admission, using words like "contrition," "extraordinary," "remarkable," and "unusually self-critical."
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A quick stroll down memory lane produced the examples that follow. Let's call it, "History under the McCain precedent."
- 1934 (WASHINGTON) - President Roosevelt today publicly excoriated himself for running on a pledge to reduce the cost of government by 25 percent and to balance the federal budget. Faced with the soaring cost of public welfare brought on by the Great Depression, FDR declared that his 1932 campaign pledge could not be fulfilled and had been a bad idea in the first place. Running against Herbert Hoover in that campaign, the Democratic nominee had flatly stated, "the one sound foundation of permanent economic recovery (is) a complete and honest balancing of the federal budget."
[FDR simply stopped talking about cutting spending and balancing the budget. When his budget chief, Lew Douglas, kept reminding him of the campaign pledge, he fired him.]
- 1952 (APPLETON, WIS.) - Republican nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower today delivered a belated tribute to his mentor, Gen. George C. Marshall, and publicly apologzed for deleting the comments from yesterday's speech in Appleton, home of GOP Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
McCarthy, leading a reckless witch hunt for communists in government, has frequently questioned the patriotism of Marshall, who placed Eisenhower in charge of Allied forces in Europe in World War II. In what was originally intended as a direct challenge to McCarthy's red-baiting libels, Eisenhower had prepared remarks defending Marshall. But at the last minute, campaign aides convinced him it would be politically unwise to attack McCarthy in his home state, and the nominee dropped the endorsement of Marshall.
[Ike, in the words of one of his biographers, was "haunted" by this lapse of loyalty for the rest of his life, but he never owned up to a failure of political courage.]
- 1961 (HYANNISPORT, Mass.) - Thirty days into his new administration, President Kennedy said today his campaign pledge to "get this country moving again" had been overstated. "It had a nice ring to it," the president declared, "but things are already moving about as well as can be expected." The president also disavowed any need for a New Frontier. "The old frontiers are good enough."
- 1976 (PLAINS, Ga.) - Democratic Presidential nominee Jimmy Carter admitted today that, contrary to comments contained in the current issue of Playboy magazine, he does not have any "lust in his heart" for women he is not married to. "It was just something my media consultants cooked up after the focus groups showed we weren't doing well with males in the 18-27 age group," Carter told a news conference at his peanut farm.
"The boys told me, 'just throw it out there, Governor, it’ll set up some buzz about your sex drive. The people want a president who's the Alpha male.' They wrote up the 'lust in my heart' line on a 3-by-5 card so I'd remember it, and I slipped it into the middle of the Playboy interview," said Carter. "There's nothing to it. I'm a Bible-thumping policy wonk, not a lover. Live with it."
- 1990 (WASHINGTON) - President Bush stunned the Washington political establishment today by declaring, "Read my lips, we need new taxes." His staff then sent a tax increase package to Capitol Hill designed to prevent the skyrocketing federal deficit from sinking the economy.
"It was just a phrase we needed to win the election. That and the Willie Horton stuff," said Bush. "Now that we’re actually running the country, we can't rely on over-simplified slogans."
- 1992 (LITTLE ROCK, Ark.) - Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton today attempted to clarify his campaign pledge that he would reduce the White House staff by 25 percent. "I don’t think we can run the place with 25 percent fewer people," he said, "but I believe we can get by with fewer paid employees. Instead, we'll have more interns."