Apologize for Everything

Apparently there are recent news stories that Beto O'Rourke has apologized for statements he recently made. Apologized for joking that he occasionally helped in raising his kids, apologized for his white privilege, and apologized for something he wrote as a teenager.

Is this the sort of person we want as President? Contrast this to the way Donald Trump won election. Every time some misstatement or past misdeed came out he didn't apologize, he either ignored it or bulled his way through the controversy. Perhaps he should have apologized for a few things, but Mr. Trump knows that most people will forget the scandal of the day and those who don't forget probably won't change their minds because of an apology. Those complaining about Trump's statements on the Access Hollywood audio recording are complaining about the statements made, not that he didn't apologize.

Yet conventional political wisdom is to apologize for any sort of misstatement and withdraw from a race if something too embarrassing comes out. Looking recent presidential races a number of candidates who seemed to be gathering traction had some past action or statement released and promptly dropped out of the race. Finding a scandal about an opponent has become a reliable technique for getting ahead in a race. And often the survivor of the presidential primary process is the candidate who doesn't give into the demands of scandal -- Hillary Clinton ignored the claims about classified emails, Uranium One, and Benghazi (admittedly coming mainly from the right) and Donald Trump ignored the Access Hollywood recording and similar claims. In fact, doing this probably helped Mr. Trump win some voters -- he's a flawed human being and not ashamed of it.

So today as the 2020 presidential race gets going, with what's shaping up to be an auditorium's worth of Democrats running, we'll see who survives. I don't give Beto O'Rourke much of a chance -- those he's apologizing to (the Social Justice left wing) are going to give their support to a woman or person of color regardless of what Mr. O'Rourke says.

Amy Klobuchar has a chance -- she's letting the scandal about her temper and poor management style blow over, though I think this doesn't say much about her qualifications for the presidency, she's essentially accused of doing the things which many say makes Donald Trump a menace.

As for the others, most candidates so far are either unknown or have their own skeletons. Elizabeth Warren has her "Pocahontas" scandal and Kamala Harris was far too tough on crime for the typical liberal democrat to name a couple that come to mind.

So time will tell which Democrats have the fortitude to stand up against accusations and make it to the election.