It seems like every time you turn on a television lately, you’re bound to see Sarah Palin. From Sean Hannity to Oprah Winfrey, the former McCain running mate has been making appearances everywhere she can in order to promote her new book.
Beyond ducking questions about her daughter’s baby daddy, there is one thing that shines through each and every media appearance: her pure and unadulterated hatred of Katie Couric.
As you may remember, during her series of sit down interviews with Couric, Palin was repeatedly shamed by her inability to withstand such extremely hard questions as what news publications she regularly read. In what should have been Palin’s shining moment to prove the critics wrong and demonstrate that she was ready to be the first woman to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, she floundered.
Palin takes absolutely no ownership for her failure. Instead, she blames Couric for asking tough questions, the broadcasters for not editing her repeated flubs from the interview, and the political rallies she had attended the same day of the interviews for tiring her to the point where she could not gather her thoughts.
In her diatribe of excuses and equivocation, we here plenty of “maverick,” “hockey mom,” and “ah-boot,” but there are two very important words that we never hear: I’m sorry.
The only thing she says that even borders on an apology is her regretting that she didn’t hide her annoyance for Couric’s “very unprofessional” questions.
As Americans, we realize our politicians are, in fact, still human. We’ve come to accept that our leaders will make mistakes. Joe Biden is apparently under the impression that the word jobs only has 3 letters, while former Vice President Dan Quayle thought “potatoe” was a correct spelling.
George W. Bush, the formidable king of the spoken gaffe, wanted to know how often we asked the question, “is our children learning?” And, of course, Barack Obama both called Kanye West a jackass before an interview, and by all accounts “acted stupidly” himself when he criticized police in the Professor Henry Gates arrest.
Obama could have gotten angry at the reporter who unethically Twittered his comment on Kanye West. The comment was said off-the-cuff during a time agreed to by all media present to be off the record, but was reported anyway.
He also could have blamed the speech on healthcare he had just given as to why his thoughts were unclear when he got the question on Gates. But he didn’t. He accepted that he made a mistake, apologized, and life went on.
The problem is as old as time. When Adam and Eve committed the very first mistake ever made, they all tried to pass it off on someone else. Adam blamed Eve for giving him the fruit, Eve blamed the snake for convincing her to pick it.
No one ever admitted it was their fault.
From world leaders to McDonalds cashiers, we would all benefit if we would simply own our mistakes. Don’t attempt to lie about them, as Clinton did about Monica Lewinsky, or deny them altogether as Bush did about weapons of mass destruction.
Don’t pass the buck, let it stop with you.