Lying To Make Friends

As I’ve written previously on this blog, I have a particular interest in the quality of public apologies.  Today’s events surrounding Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX, of course) present two interesting questions:  1) How should we react to an apology that is sincere and unqualified, but concerns something that absolutely should not be apologized for?;  and 2)  How does one properly apologize for an apology?

Barton’s apology to BP CEO Tony Hayward at this morning’s Congressional hearing  for the Obama administration’s “shakedown” of BP lacked many of the flaws one usually sees in a public apology.  It sounded sincere and unequivocal, did not make any excuses and did not blame BP for it’s own role in the underlying matter.  The problem, however, is that the “shakedown” for which Barton was apologizing was actually a perfectly reasonable demand that BP pay its share for causing one of the worst environmental disasters in history.

In a rare moment of good taste and political sense, the Republican leadership demanded Barton retract his apology, and issue a new apology for the apology.  (Finally answering the question of how outrageous a Republican member of Congress’s statement must be before Republican leadership will consider it to be out of line.)  Barton’s apology for the apology provides an interesting combination of what are perhaps the two most common and obnoxious species of bad public apologies:  “I’m sorry if anyone was offended” and “My comments were misinterpreted.”  Barton indeed claims his words were misconstrued (how could anyone belief that apologizing to BP meant he was sympathetic to BP?), and then goes on to conclude “I want to apologize for that misconstruction.”  The “I want to apologize for that misconstruction,” phrasing, like “I’m sorry if anyone was offended,”  is interesting because the speaker is essentially apologizing to the listener on the listener’s own behalf.  Even if the problem really were with how Barton’s comments were construed by others, and not that they were out of line with reality and indicative of political corruption, then he should at least be apologizing for his own poor word choice.  Or, of course, he could have avoided this all entirely by not siding with the oil company in an oil spill.

-AR