{"id":6044,"date":"2005-12-09T13:41:21","date_gmt":"2005-12-09T18:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6044"},"modified":"2005-12-09T13:41:21","modified_gmt":"2005-12-09T18:41:21","slug":"that-passive-voice-phrase-just-wont-go-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/that-passive-voice-phrase-just-wont-go-away\/","title":{"rendered":"That passive voice phrase just won’t go away"},"content":{"rendered":"

As long-time readers know, I’ve had an odd fascination<\/a> with the use of the passive voice phrase “mistakes were made.” Reagan made it famous in 1986<\/a> in reference to the Iran-contra scandal, but it’s been used to describe the war in Iraq quite a bit lately.<\/p>\n

Last year, describing the Abu Ghraib scandal, Bush said, “Mistakes were made<\/a>.” Last month, Rick Santorum described the war by saying, “It’s also important for the people of Iraq to know that…mistakes are made<\/a>.” Just last weekend, on Meet the Press, John McCain said “mistakes were made<\/a>” twice in the same interview.<\/p>\n

But on Wednesday, during his speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Bush took the phrase<\/a> to a new level. If it weren’t so sad, I might have been impressed.<\/p>\n

“Senator Lieberman goes on, ‘Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes, we do. And it’s important to make clear to the American people that the plan has not remained stubbornly still, but has changed over the years.’ The Senator says that mistakes have been made<\/b>. But he goes on to say that he is worried about a bigger mistake. He writes, ‘What a colossal mistake it would be for America’s bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.’ Senator Lieberman is right.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In general, the amazing thing about the phrase isn’t just its passivity, but its underlying motivation. Describing the war in Iraq, Santorum and McCain, among others, were willing to concede that someone<\/i> made a mistake; they just weren’t willing to say who. Active voice would assign responsibility; passive voice admits errors without assigning blame.<\/p>\n

But notice how Bush used the phrase. He wasn’t willing to personally acknowledge that “mistakes were made”; so he quoted someone else (a Democrat, no less) making the observation for him. It’s usually an accountability-free admission anyway, but Bush took it one step further, using Lieberman to acknowledge the existence of mistakes the president doesn’t feel comfortable recognizing.<\/p>\n

“I’m<\/i> not saying mistakes were made,” Bush essentially argued, “but someone else<\/i> did and I’m passing his remarks on.”<\/p>\n

Impressive, isn’t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As long-time readers know, I’ve had an odd fascination with the use of the passive voice phrase “mistakes were made.” Reagan made it famous in 1986 in reference to the Iran-contra scandal, but it’s been used to describe the war in Iraq quite a bit lately. Last year, describing the Abu Ghraib scandal, Bush said, […]<\/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-6044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6044","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=6044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}