Many of Us Love the 'No Apologies' Style, Until We Think We're Owed One
Over on the NRO home page, I take a look at the "no apologies" personas of Donald Trump and Ann Coulter. American culture is of two minds when it comes to apologies. George Washington expressed regret for the way he treated his slaves; Abraham Lincoln wrote formal letters of apology. In 1997, Miss Manners wrote, "The apology is a wonderful thing, indispensible for soothing if not raging feelings in a volatile society." But Americans have also periodically applauded the refusal to apologize, sensing the admission of fault to be un-masculine or soft. In the 1949 film She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, John Wayne declares, "Never apologize. It's a sign of weakness." Jethro Gibbs, the zen master of masculine toughness on CBS' top-rated NCIS, echoes Wayne's line as one of his rules. Barry Goldwater's most famous quote can be interpreted as a refusal to apologize for his stances: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Neither Donald Trump nor Ann Coulter speaks in a vacuum; their give-no-quarter style reflects the era. Americans have endured much worse than hurt feelings in recent years, with nary an apology. No one on Wall Street or the financial world apologized for the housing bubble or Great Recession. The president never apologized for not delivering on his promise to "lower health-insurance premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year" and Chuck Todd had to pull teeth to get the president to express contrition for his many loud pledges that Americans who liked their plans could keep their plans. "I am sorry that they, you know, are finding themselves in this situation, based on assurances they got from me," the president shrugged. Confronted with his early assessment of ISIS as the "JV team", Obama didn't apologize for his bad judgment but instead implausibly insisted he was referring to other organizations. The previous Secretary of State never apologized for a silly "reset button" ceremony that was followed by new levels of Russian military aggression against neighboring Ukraine. No one at the State Department ever apologized for turning down Ambassador Chris Stephens's requests for additional security in Libya. No one at the Office of Personnel Management apologized for a breach of 22 million personnel records. Occasionally, after egregious, high-profile failures, administration officials like Veterans' Affairs secretary Eric Shinseki, EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius apologized -- almost literally the least they could do, considering the scale of the failures on their watch. The eternal refusal to admit fault can be infuriating in a presidential candidate. But the mentality is far worse in an administration, with so many more far-reaching consequences. Wait, We're Complaining about Pandering Now? Separately, one of Coulter's Tweets on debate night lamented, "All GOPs = prolife, pro-Reagan, pro-Israel. Pandering on all 3 tonight was EPIC." First, finding pandering at a political debate is kind of like finding gambling in Casablanca. You really shouldn't be that genuinely surprised by it. Secondly, Bob Dylan sang, "You gotta serve somebody"; a politician's gotta pander to somebody. Given all the options, I prefer candidates pandering on reducing abortions, Ronald Reagan, and standing by Israel. Another Abysmal Failure of the Administration -- But We're Getting Used to It! We're in the very best of hands, as Glenn Reynolds says. Here's the New York Times this morning, declaring President Obama's Syria policy "an abysmal failure." By any measure, President Obama's effort to train a Syrian opposition army to fight the Islamic State on the ground has been an abysmal failure. The military acknowledged this week that just four or five American-trained fighters are actually fighting. But the White House says it is not to blame. The finger, it says, should be pointed not at Mr. Obama but at those who pressed him to attempt training Syrian rebels in the first place -- a group that, in addition to congressional Republicans, happened to include former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. . . . With more than 200,000 killed in the civil war, a wave of refugees flooding into Europe, and Russia now flying in arms and troops, the president finds himself with a geopolitical and humanitarian mess that will most likely not be settled before he leaves office in 16 months. Mr. Obama has long considered Syria a quagmire that defies American solutions, and aides are hoping to keep him from being held responsible for something that, they argue, he never really had the power to fix. But with images of drowned children and Russian tanks, the president has come under increasing fire from multiple directions. Hey, just a thought, maybe not the best metaphor in a story about a bloody civil war. With war and bloodshed flourishing during this presidency, perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised to see . . . Nobel Peace Prize Judge: Yeah, That Award to Obama Was a Mistake You don't have to know or understand American culture to be a good judge for the Nobel Peace Prize . . . but it probably would help. In a break with Nobel tradition, the former secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize committee says the 2009 award to President Barack Obama failed to live up to the panel's expectations. Geir Lundestad writes in a book to be released on Thursday that the committee had expected the prize to deliver a boost to Obama. Instead the award was met with fierce criticism in the U.S., where many argued Obama had not been president long enough to have an impact worthy of the Nobel. "Even many of Obama's supporters believed that the prize was a mistake," Lundestad wrote in excerpts of the book read by The Associated Press. "In that sense the committee didn't achieve what it had hoped for." Speaking to AP on Wednesday, Lundestad said he didn't disagree with the decision to award the president but the committee "thought it would strengthen Obama and it didn't have this effect." Oh, he's disappointed with Obama's presidency? 
It would probably be wise for the Nobel Committee to read our Jay Nordlinger's tough but fair assessment of the history of the award, Peace, They Say. As an Amazon reviewer summarized: As far back as 1964 William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote "Any redblooded Westerner should think twice before accepting a Nobel award, precisely because to do so is to lend the recipient's prestige not merely to the idiosyncratic criteria the Committee uses, but to its political relativism." While I admire Jay Nordlinger's work at the magazine Buckley founded, I was concerned that this work would be an extended opinion peace on the Nobel committee's biases. Fortunately, this isn't the case. Nordlinger is thorough and fair. He provides his own conclusions, but only after summarizing both sides of any controversy. Sometimes he is surprising. For example, Nordlinger doesn't fault the Nobel committee for honoring Yassir Arafat. He understands its motivation to encourage negotiations in the Middle East. In fact Nordlinger notes that the prize is often awarded to works in progress that don't pan out. Occasionally this works out, such as the South African awards. Another key point is that the Nobel committee often violates Alfred Nobel's will. It is supposed to go to the person who did the most for peace in the preceding year. Instead it is frequently a "lifetime achievement award." One change Nordlinger recommends is to focus less on celebrities. An additional criticism is that the award isn't always directly related to peace between nations. Sometimes the awards are for humantarian or human rights work. These efforts can be very worthwhile, but aren't directly related to peace. A frequent topic is the meaning of "peace." Mr. Nordlinger believes that Nobel believed in deterrence, not pacifism. ADDENDA: This week's pop-culture podcast: why I'm getting tired of Neil Patrick Harris -- and the stunning revelation that my co-host has never seen a single episode of How I Met Your Mother, which I think is running in a 24-hour loop in syndication; what Facebook's potential new "dislike" button will mean for online fights; the worst of Hollywood's 90 or so reboots, remakes, or sequels in the works; and whether online social interaction is starting to displace real-life social interaction. | 
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