"I accept responsibility," and deja vu

I was wrong when I said no one in government would lose anything in the aftermath of Katrina. Michael Brown, the feckless head of FEMA, has resigned (never fear, he’ll be back as a billion-dollar lobbyist for Halliburton – special interest, disaster operations). But I was wrong. I accept responsibility.

“I accept responsibility.” Where have we heard that before? It’s becoming, of course - especially of late - de rigueur for public officials, a veritable mantra. I heard it first in 1978, when an IRS plenipotentiary said he would "take responsibility" (for an auditor, the accuracy of an IRS audit and tax assessment, and the deal worked out with my attorney). When the agreed arrangement proved disadvantageous - very - for the government, the panjandrum for the nation's purported revenuer promptly repudiated everything he'd said, even though everything had been recorded and was on tape.

I heard the "responsibility" burp again when Janet Reno covered herself with it after having been responsible for barbecuing 78 women and kids in the Branch Davidian Compound at Waco. In my book, “Letters to Aaron,” I asked, “So what does that mean, Frau Obergruppenfuehrerin? You’ll throw yourself on your sword? Yeah, right! Sure.”

Now Mr. Bush says he’ll take responsibility. (notice that he said “IF” he’s done anything wrong.- George NEVER admits a mistake straight out). Same question: What the F--- (“To speak of outrage in mild language is treasonous to virtue,” to paraphrase Edmund Burke) does that mean, sir? Specifically – well, even generally – I mean. Will you resign (that you’re incompetent is painfully obvious by now)? Or should we recall JFK’s mea culpa, mea maxima culpa to CIA Director Allen Dulles after the Bay of Pigs debacle (“Somebody has to take the fall; and since it can’t be the president, it has to be the head of the agency.”)?

What does it mean, Mr. President, that you’ll take responsibility? Will you write a check (your own money, I mean)? Take a cut in pay? Do time? Help in the clean-up (you know, like you “clear cedar” down at the ranch for the cameras)? Will you pile sandbags? Swing a hammer? Help clean up the scum and sewage? No, I don’t suppose – too much like Cain killing Abel (the scum, I mean).

Mild language, etc.

What the hell does it mean, “take responsibility?” ). Like you take responsibility for the carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan? Like you did on the World Trade Center (who can you bomb hell out of for causing a hurricane . . . oh, no – watch out Fidel!)? Like you took responsibility in the National Guard? Like you took responsibility for all the failed companies and bankrupted enterprises you used for rungs on the ladder in your climb to millionaire (billionaire) “success?”

Odd, isn’t it – the way the country lets the Congress grill hell out of a nominee for the Cabinet or Supreme Court, but lets a guy running for president off with whatever reporters controlled by the people who put the people running in the race can come up with? Imagine Mr. Bush having to stand up to what Robert Bourke and Clarence Thomas had to put up with, or what John Roberts Is putting up with.

And Governor Blanco is “responsible, too.” Isn’t that precious?! Gracious? Do you suppose that means she won’t run again next time? Sure (fat chance, anyway, huh).

SO. What does it mean when a “leader” says he’ll accept responsibility? IT MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. It means that once you have slept on duty while a bunch of Keystone Kops clowns slipped by a National Security Adviser who wasn’t alarmed when she learned that the National Transportation Board didn’t consider a four-inch bladed knife a weapon to high-jack airliners, the nation re-elects you bungling butt.

It means that once it’s become incontrovertible – after months and months of lying by equivocation, insinuation, and “there must be weapons there, because we don’t know there aren’t” – that you lied about “weapons of mass destruction,” the public will continue to think you’re a leader, anyway. No one realizes that a Judas goat is a leader, I guess.

But you know that, don’t you? So you’ll “take responsibility.” You know, SIR, it’s well known that my respect for your kind wouldn’t make you blink if you got it in your eye, but you’re special. In fact, I was wrong in comparing you and your ilk to scum and the other things that rise to the top in a sewer like federal politics. You rise even faster and higher, like a bubble. And bubbles are a perfect example of things empty, the emptiness hiding hopelessly behind a thing veneer.

Like, “I’ll take responsibility.”