Regrets, I've Had a Few

Following in her boss's footsteps, Condoleezza Rice is taking her own redemption tour in order to -- what? Secure her place in history as something other than a complete dupe? Perhaps. Of course, her divorce from reality is just as "no fault" as Bush's. She "regrets" that "flawed intelligence" formed the basis for the invasion of Iraq. Hey! Condi, baby! That intelligence wasn't "flawed" -- it was a pack of lies that was made up out of whole cloth because someone wanted the U.S. to invade and occupy Iraq. You fell for it... the people who pulled it off are still in power... they got what they wanted, and you were left holding the bag. And the way to respond is not to express "regret" but to bring the troops home and put those responsible in jail. But, well, you know these State Department types -- nothing is ever anyone's fault, things just happen, etc.

But the spectacle of Rice's gradual public enlightenment is actually more striking than Bush's for the simple reason that she is, apparently, highly intelligent and capable, and has considerable insight -- unlike what's-his-name. So she is bound to be feeling more acutely misused by the Neocons et al, than Bush, who still considers them his friends. In this, she is much more in the mold of Colin Powell, who knows he was made a fool of and isn't afraid to express it that way. And, being used in this way must be a more profound violation of Rice's self-image than it is of Bush's, since... well, what has he ever had to base his self-image on, anyway? If he'd been born into a normal family he might be a retired rodeo cowboy about now... but certainly nothing more.

The most interesting thing about these redemption tours, as I call them, is that they are taking place while the people in question are still in office. No gentle, fading-away retirement with, years later, memoirs that no one reads. In this case, they are crying "mea culpa" with their hands still on the controls, at least in theory -- and (again, in theory) it wouldn't be too late to actually do something about it, if they were so inclined. Rice could blow the cover on any number of Neocons who infest the State Department, for instance. Bush could order the troops home! Or, at the very least, order them to prepare to return home, and just let Obama try and reverse the order in a few weeks. (Now wouldn't that be fun?) The fact that this is impossible shows that Job One of anyone in the Regime is covering the ass of everyone else in the Regime. No news there.

But at least we're seeing a genuinely new trend in politics -- call it the shattering of illusions, genuine regrets, and maybe even hints of having a conscience. Every day in the news someone comes out with the sort of statement that David Frost spent hours trying to get out of Richard Nixon... and that we have never heard from Bill Clinton (or Jimmy Carter, for that matter... not to mention LBJ). This in itself is a good thing. But it would be even better if that lobe of their brain had been activated when they took office rather than eight years later.