Dis-Honest Mistakes

Infamous Harley rider Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent motorcycle accident exposed the fact that the California Governor didn’t actually have a license to drive a motorcycle. He explained that he just never thought to get one. He had better things to do than obey quaint laws.

Apparently, the Republican Lie Machine has placed this tactic at the top of its Crisis Response List, which must look something like this:

If caught lying, giving jobs to unqualified cronies, endorsing torture, laundering money, exchanging votes for money, accepting illegal campaign contributions, trading on inside information, making radical statements about the Constitution, drunken driving or driving without a license, look straight at the cameras and say the most fitting of the following statements…

“I just never thought about it.”
“It never occurred to me that it was wrong.”
“I never thought it was that important.”
“I was just too busy to notice.”
“Bill Clinton did the same thing.”
“It was twenty years ago.”

Even thought none of these statements would prevent a poor person or minority from being tried and convicted of a crime, when such statements come from a white male Republican we can assume that he honestly and sincerely had a very good and legitimate reason for his actions and should be excused from any responsibility. When a junkie gets busted with drugs, he should be locked away forever. But when Rush Limbaugh gets his fat, white butt busted, hey, “It was an honest mistake.”

Indeed, it’s easy to imagine Arnold proclaiming that “laws are for the little people” as he speeds away in his golf cart, fat cigar hanging from his lips. And it’s easy to imagine the vast majority of Republican politicians saying the same thing at their respective country clubs. Exclusive, mostly-white country clubs, to be exact. These are the conservatives who run the Republican party, the Radical Right elites who feel entitled to stretch the rules and avoid the trivial obstacles, like licenses, that the rest of us live with. Of course, they are more worthy of mercy and understanding than the rest of us, too.

Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito didn’t feel obligated to discuss with the Senate today his 1985 statement that Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Yet his refusal to disavow the same statement affirms this conservative strategy:

We have the power, so we don’t need to tell the truth. And the American people are too busy trying to make ends meet (thanks to the failures of our economic policies!) to put all our deceptions together and discover that we are, in fact, working against their interests to benefit a small group of wealthy friends.

Statements like “Golly, it was an honest mistake,” have come to mean “I’m so important and powerful and self-righteous that I don’t need to be honest.” Fortunately, as the Greeks pointed out centuries ago, hubris always leads to nemesis. And the 2006 elections are right around the corner…