Obama: ‘I screwed up’
February 4, 2009 at 7:23 am by Wayne GarciaProgressives see it as a sign of what change looks like. Conservatives such as Laura Ingraham are already crowing “we told you so” (on The Today Show this morning, in Ingraham’s case). But President Barack Obama was forced to make a candid mea culpa after losing two high-ranking nominees, including Tom Daschle, to sloppy vetting and tax-dodging problems.
From DailyKos:
It’s been a long time since I’ve heard these words from any politican, much less from a President:
“I’m here on television saying I screwed up, and that’s part of the era of responsibility. It’s not never making mistakes; it’s owning up to them and trying to make sure you never repeat them and that’s what we intend to do.”
When the nation watched horrified while the Department of Homeland Security fumbled painfully in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Michael Chertoff blamed it on phantom headlines, George Bush assured Brownie he was ‘doing a heckuva job,’ and right-wing pundits eagerly acquitted the Whitehouse by trying to lay the whole mess at the feet of the victims and any democrat within 1000 miles. When George Bush and his merry band of neoclowns stampeded a panicked nation into an ill-conceived war against Iraq and rolled snake-eyes on catching bin Laden it was all because of ‘bad intel’ and blown all out of proportion by biased, ‘liberal reporters’ feeding the progressive pathology of ‘Bush Derangement Syndrome.’
Another question remains, and I hate to echo the right: why was it wrong for Killefer and Daschle but OK for Treasury Secy. Tim Geithner?
