Politicians make my blood boil.

I've talked before on this blog about apologies - good ones, bad ones, non ones. It seems that Lousiana Senator David Vitter (Republican for those who care) has given us new material with which to address this topic, and I'm none too happy about it.

I'm annoyed that I'm having to address it again, because I'm not bringing it up to praise Vitter. I'm using his arrogant apology to point out to another example of what you shouldn't do when apologizing. Arrogant, you say? He was arrogant? Yes. He was.

Vitter's name showed up in a madam's phone book. Seems he couldn't keep it in his pants when away from his wife and children and was even willing to pay to break his marriage vows. And now we all know about it. Okay. So, what with him being active in the Giuliani campaign (don't you know Rudy wants to bitch-slap him?), he's got to apologize publicly. So he did.

He started off okay. He says it's a serious sin. He accepts full responsibility. But then he says he asked for forgiveness from God and received it. That's where he loses me. See, I believe that if you ask God sincerely for forgiveness - and sincerity is key - you get it. He probably is forgiven. BUT when you're asking someone ELSE for forgiveness, don't play the "God forgives me" card, because implicit in that is, "God forgave me, so you should, too, and it shouldn't be an issue anymore."

First of all, there's the timing. God knew what you did when you did it. He had plenty of time to wait around for you to feel bad about it and then admit it and ask forgiveness. The rest of us just now heard about it, so the implication that we should also forgive you today, the moment we hear about it - well, the public may need a bit more time. And don't say that the public's forgiveness is irrelevant - you didn't just betray your wife. You held yourself up as some kind of bearer of public morality - Mr. Family Values - and now we know you are in no position to be telling any of us how to behave.

Secondly, there's the implication itself that God forgave you so we should. Yet again, we find YOU telling US what to do and basing it in some kind of moral authority. You know what God wants - you've discussed it and now you're telling us, as an informed messenger of The Most Holy One (not the pope - I'm assuming he's not involved, since the current pope would probably cut your willie off for diddling a prostitute). So we should all do as we're told. Granted, you don't say outright that we should forgive you, but the fact that you're telling us that God and your wife have given you a pass...well, the implication is there. Why tell us that if you weren't suggesting something? Anyone who heard you say that felt uncomfortable about it - they just may not have known why.

Lastly, there's the apology for letting people down "in any way." When people say that, there's a sense that they don't really know how exactly they let you down, but okay, you feel let down so whatever it was I did to let you down, sorry. It's a mild form of the non-apology. "Sorry you feel bad for whatever it is you feel I did." He knows what he did, but he seems to minimize why others may feel let down because of it. He should've just left the "in any way" off and just said he was sorry to the people he let down. Period. He let them down, he gets how and why, and he's sorry. End of story.

Apologies are not complicated. They're really not. They may be hard, because it requires you to acknowledge that you did something wrong, to accept responsibility for it, and to make yourself vulnerable to the possibility that the other person might not accept it. But they're not complicated. You don't justify what you did. You don't tell the other person how to handle your apology (that they should, for instance, forgive you like God did, or let it go, etc.). You don't suggest that what you did wasn't that bad, or it's all about the other person's hyperactive emotions rather than what you did. You don't just say, "Sorry" without acknowledging what you're sorry for.

You just plain accept responsiblity for what you did, acknowledge why the other person is hurt by it, say you're sorry and take your lumps. And you do every bit of it sincerely. That's it. The vast majority of the time, you do that, you'll be forgiven and people will move on much faster. You don't, they'll continue to feel resentment and it'll never completely be over.