The Grim Politics of Saving Face
Why “I was wrong” has become the rarest phrase in our democratic conversation
Here’s a scenario that’s not easy to conjure: It’s inauguration day. Your new president is being sworn into office. Unlike their now disgraced (and, dare we speculate, incarcerated) predecessor, they’ve worked at various levels of government for years, steeped in the intrigue and conventions of Congress. Yet for all their investment in the system, they’ve canvassed on the promise of change. Instead of blarney and bluster, they spent the campaign diagnosing a malignant political landscape that you have long believed to be broken. You haven’t really bought their Damascene conversion. How could you? Politics, to pull an evergreen quote from Orwell, has always been “a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.”
But then they step up to the lectern to deliver their inaugural address, and to the surprise of everyone present, it goes something like this:
“Good people of America, it is my duty, as your newly elected president, to state plainly that many of the policies pursued by this government in recent years have been immoral, stupid, and wrong. For decades, the people representing you in these assemblies have allowed political expediency to get in the way of their moral judgement, and because of…
