{"id":10196,"date":"2007-03-13T15:25:29","date_gmt":"2007-03-13T19:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10196.html"},"modified":"2007-03-13T15:25:29","modified_gmt":"2007-03-13T19:25:29","slug":"gonzales-mistakes-were-made","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/gonzales-mistakes-were-made\/","title":{"rendered":"Gonzales: ‘Mistakes were made’"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there’s a way [tag]Alberto Gonzales[\/tag] survives this scandal<\/a>, I don’t see it.<\/p>\n

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that “[tag]mistakes were made[\/tag]” regarding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys and he accepts responsibility for the ordeal.<\/p>\n

“My pledge to the American people is to find out what went wrong here,” he said. “As we can all imagine, in an organization of 110,000 people, I am not aware of every bit of information that passes through the halls of justice, nor am I aware of all decisions.”<\/p>\n

However, despite calls for his [tag]resign[\/tag]ation, Gonzales said he was not stepping down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gonzales has had quite a bit of time to come up with a coherent defense, and today’s comments came at a press conference he scheduled. Needless to say, he came up with a rather unpersuasive defense — he was out of the loop.<\/p>\n

Gonzales may not be “aware of every bit of information that passes through the halls of justice,” but in this case, he can’t just pass this off on underlings who subverted the legal process. Gonzales personally<\/a> chatted with Bush in October about complaints the White House had received from Republicans about prosecutors who resisted efforts to politicize their offices. Gonzales personally<\/a> approved the idea of firing a small group of U.S. Attorneys, instead of all 93. It was Gonzales’ chief of staff who had coordinated the purge with the White House. “Passes through the halls of justice”? How about “passes his desk”?<\/p>\n

And yet, there was Gonzales today, acknowledging the scandal, accepting responsibility, and insisting he hadn’t done anything wrong. (At some point, someone is going to have to explain to senior administration officials what “accept responsibility” means.)<\/p>\n

He added<\/a>, “I stand by the decision and I think it was the right decision” to fire the Gonzales Eight. Why? He didn’t say. Indeed, shortly after that point, Gonzales ducked a few questions, put his head down, and walked away.<\/p>\n

How soon until he resigns? A week? A month?
\n
\nPost Script<\/i>: On a tangential point, I can’t resist mentioning the oddity of Gonzales using the phrase “mistakes were made.” After all the times that infamous passive voice phrase has been uttered, you’d think Republicans would know to avoid it.<\/p>\n

Former President Ronald Reagan, on the Iran-Contra scandal, in 1986<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“Mistakes were made.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

George W. Bush, on the Abu Ghraib scandal, in 2004<\/a>:<\/p>\n

” It’s also important for the people of Iraq to know that in a democracy, everything is not perfect, that mistakes are made.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And now Gonzales is taking it for a whirl. The problem with the phrase isn’t just the passivity or the historical repetition; it’s the underlying motivation that makes the passive voice necessary in the first place.<\/p>\n

It active voice, the phrase needs a proper noun. Someone<\/i> made a mistake, Reagan, Bush, and Gonzales suggest, but they won’t say who. They’re willing to acknowledge that a mistake occurred, but they’ll go no farther.<\/p>\n

The phenomenon seems to fit nicely into the way in which modern Republicans use language. Active voice demonstrates responsibility; passive voice admits errors without assigning blame. It’s an accountability-free admission, which is just the way too many Republicans like it.<\/p>\n

In fact, it’s worth remembering that it was George Orwell in “Politics and the English Language” who explained that “the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active” by those who hope to obscure the truth.<\/p>\n

A half-century later, it’s still true.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If there’s a way [tag]Alberto Gonzales[\/tag] survives this scandal, I don’t see it. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that “[tag]mistakes were made[\/tag]” regarding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys and he accepts responsibility for the ordeal. “My pledge to the American people is to find out what went wrong here,” he said. “As we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}