PENN PROFESSOR: WHY I APOLOGIZED TO THE BUSH WHITE HOUSE

I CAN SEE from the Daily News' Friday editorial ("A Penn professor gets a lesson from Bush") that you are puzzled, dismayed and disappointed by my statements of last Monday concerning the Esquire magazine article. You may not like or accept my reasons, but I will give them.

Sixteen months ago, I left the White House after serving the half-year I publicly said I would when I took the job. I stayed just long enough to complete the only task at which I had any special skill, namely "Unlevel Playing Field," a study exploring how government discriminates against grassroots religious groups in its grant-making processes. The report is still at www.whitehouse.gov.

During my first year out of the White House, I turned away journalists interested in my time in the Bush administration.

Then, in September, I got a call from a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a journalist who already had interviewed my former White House senior staff colleagues. He was interested in the administration's domestic and social policy apparatus. I didn't have the time for sit-down interviews, but, in a free moment in October, I bundled his questions in my head, and dashed off a semi-stream-of-consciousness memo.

I stupidly supposed that my remarks would be used selectively as but one inside viewpoint of many, and that - given my pre-White House status and my well-known New Democrat leanings and academic posture - people would naturally consider the source. I have taken issue with and apologized sincerely for things in the article, but I surely cannot and do not blame the journalist for my own bozo-brained mistake.

My missive was sloppy, and as entire books are written by ex-administration officials who were there much longer and saw much more than I did, and as historians do their work, we will all know better how things really worked there.

Nor can I blame anyone but myself for completely underestimating how, my self-definition as an independent-minded professor and centrist Democrat policy wonk notwithstanding, my public reflections - even had they been balanced, as I had stupidly assumed they would be, by more knowledgeable and more sympathetic others - were bound to be received entirely as those of an "ex-White House official," and hence to be hyper-newsworthy.

Ditto for my writing such smart-aleck but empty phrases as "Mayberry Machiavellis" to refer to people whose public-spirited characters, whatever policy lacks I or other armchair quarterbacks might identify with them, are superior to my own. I made very plain to all my deep respect, affection and admiration for the president himself, but the staff deserved much better from me, too.

Regarding my apologies, my first statement stands. My second two-sentence statement, the one in which I accept verbatim White House press secretary Ari Fleisher's characterization of my criticisms as "baseless and groundless," stands, too. But as your editorial pointedly suggested, it requires clarification, which I now provide even at the risk of adding instant autobiography to the list of things for which I need to be sorry.

To wit: My dad died in my arms in August after a three-year battle with illness. I thought mainly of him on Monday. He always taught me that when you apologize to people, you apologize "with no half-smile, with all your heart, and on your knees, or not at all."

In other words, whether completely culpable or not, and whether there are complicated mitigating if not exonerating motivations and circumstances or not, you do not express honest, heartfelt remorse for wrong by quibbling over how the wronged person or persons characterize it. In this case, my cultural-paternal conditioning, plus my Catholic self-examination of conscience, accounts for my repeat of Mr. Fleisher's words. Basta.

Finally, my biggest moral and mental error was to get into personnel at all when all that truly matters is institutional dynamics, policy and results. On domestic policy, there is plenty enough about the latter over which to debate and disagree.

On civic results, the president came to Philadelphia on July 4, 2001, to celebrate a program that puts caring adult mentors, mobilized via local churches, into the lives of the low-income children of prisoners. Quality mentoring has been proven to dramatically improve the life prospects of all, including the most severely at-risk youth.

The Philadelphia program has grown since the president's visit, and is being replicated in other cities. But there are nearly 2 million children in this country with one or both parents behind bars, and this need, like so many social needs, can only be met if we all follow where the president has led: "Government cannot be replaced by charities, but we must welcome them as partners, not resent them as rivals."

Anyhow, this flap has hastened a decision, in the works for many months, to end my 16-year public intellectual journey, the better to take up my private community-serving ministry journey: No more general political or popular writing, more academic research and teaching focused on faith-based organizations, and redoubled volunteer service and fund-raising.

I am grateful to God that we each have, and sometimes rediscover in the oddest or most painful way, our own special charge to keep.

I think the guy got into the big time for the first time in his life. Being a big deal on campus, and showing your superb mental abilities to adoring students is one thing. Getting into the arena of ideas in a Bush White House and trying to make your points over top of the experienced pros is another. It is like trying to go from college football to the NFL.

People who get a chance to play in the big time either lay back while learning to play or they try to get in the game immediately. Those that try to play too early get trounced.

When people get defeated they often get angry. They tend to strike out at the people who defeated them Later when the hurt and anger has dissipated they are sorry for what they have said. Especially if they have to face they got beat fair and square. That is likely what happened here.

He just found out he was only minor league player. Lots of times people don't find that out where they truly rank until they get called up. Being sent back to the minors is tough to handle.

The problem is the media is full of vultures ready to feast off of someone's misfortune.

Here in my hometown a Democrat who had served in the state legislature for decades got beat. He was hurt and on election night said some hateful things to the local newspaper. They printed it and then trashed him for saying it. Had I been the editor I would have given him a few hours to come to terms with the defeat, and then called him before press time to confirm his statements. He wsould have revised his remarks and I would have printed the revised version. The media likes to use rash statements made by people who are hurting. It may sell papers but to me, it is disgusting.

This guy has had enough. He just wants to quit trying to play.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.