In what historians may recall as a groundbreaking moment in the era of the public apology, Joe Barton, the Texas congressman, has officially apologized for having apologized.
That’s right. He retracted his apology. He regretted his regret. He was sorry that he ever mentioned that he was, well, sorry.
All I can think of is, it’s like watching “Oprah” in rewind.
Maybe the weirdest thing about the entire affair is that Barton’s withdrawn apology was just one of the many weird things he did that day.
The drama began with BP CEO Tony Hayward, presumably the villain of the piece, testifying at a House subcommittee hearing at which Barton was the ranking Republican.
We expected to hear Hayward apologize — to the small people, to the wildlife (including those wayward walruses), to the rest of us. And he didn’t disappoint, exactly. He took some blame while avoiding most questions. In other words, it was like any other congressional hearing in which the bad guy tries to evade any real responsibility. In fact, Hayward’s testimony was directly out of the yes-I’m-sorry-but-if-you- look-closely-it-wasn’t-really-my- fault apology handbook.
What we didn’t expect was Barton’s follow-up expression of regret, in which he apologized to Hayward for, uh, I don’t know, befouling a huge swath of American coastline.
That’s right. Barton apologized to the guy whose company’s rig blew up, killing 11 workers and causing what is routinely called the worst environmental disaster in American history.
Why not just say: “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”
Here’s the reason Barton apologized to Hayward: It was because Barack Obama had the nerve to get BP to agree to put $20 billion in escrow to reimburse the victims of the catastrophic spill.
It was a remarkable performance, if only because politicians routinely spend their lives trying desperately not to offend voters. And here was Barton telling America that, in this offense, the real victim was Big Oil.
He tried to make this case even as a new CNN poll shows that two- thirds of Americans think Obama hasn’t been tough enough on BP.
Barton — a longtime Big Oil guy — called the $20 billion fund a “slush fund” resulting from a White House “shakedown.” He said he was “ashamed” of what the White House had done and that getting BP to put up the money was — I’m not kidding here — a “tragedy.”
I’m guessing the only person happier than Hayward to have heard Barton’s lament was Obama. Democrats have been trying for weeks to show that the drill-baby-drill crowd was on the side of the oil companies.
And up steps Barton to make the case.
He’s not alone, of course. You’d think getting BP to put up $20 billion that taxpayers wouldn’t have to pay would be a good thing. But Michele Bachmann said the $20 billion was “a redistribution-of-wealth fund,” and various conservatives have called it “Chicago-style” politics. This comes apparently from a Tea Party-style theme that what Obama wants is to take over either big business or possibly the entire world.
The people who understood the damage immediately were, of course, other Republican politicians. Some of them wanted to strip Barton of his subcommittee ranking. Others, I’m sure, wanted to do worse.
The Republican House leadership, meanwhile, apparently forced Barton to issue his apology for his apology and promised it may not end there.
As I mentioned, we live in the age of apology. But it’s usually Tiger Woods or a wandering governor or an athlete caught using steroids or a candidate who can’t quite remember what he did during the Vietnam War or the workings of a pseudo-celebrity shoplifter.
Often, of course, it’s Bill Clinton. Sometimes it’s Jim Joyce.
There are, as we know, different levels of apology. The one that has been perfected in recent years is the I-apologize-to-anyone-who-has- been-offended apology. But Barton couldn’t leave it there.
In his first run at an apology for the apology, he said BP was responsible for the accident and “if anything I said this morning has been misconstrued in an opposite effect, I want to apologize for that misconstruction.”
The misconstrued-misconstruction attempt didn’t do the job, however, and that’s when Barton went all the way. If Obama has ultimate responsibility for making sure the spill stops, Republicans were working hard to stop the bleeding.
“I apologize for using the term ‘shakedown’ with regard to yesterday’s actions at the White House in my opening statement this morning, and I retract my apology to BP,” Barton said.
And there it was — the apology apology. I don’t know if that’s a first. Everything, they tell you, has happened before.
But if love means never having to say you’re sorry, what does it mean when you have to say you’re sorry for saying that you’re sorry?
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
