December 9, 2002
THE MODEL MEA CULPA:
PENN PROFESSOR: WHY I APOLOGIZED TO THE BUSH WHITE HOUSE (JOHN J. DiIULIO JR., Dec. 09, 2002, Philadelphia Daily News)[I]n 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. [...]
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.
Everyone in Washington should keep a copy of that on their desk as a reminder of how you accept blame when you screw up. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 9, 2002 7:17 PM
So he'll no longer write for the public! I bet he renounces that pledge within a year.
Posted by: pj at December 9, 2002 8:33 PMI have only one question--will anyone in the liberal media ever publish this and will the letter recieve any circulation whatsoever? This is such a potent condemnation of the manner in which the originary writer/publication operates its anti-Bush agenda; and as such gives us a wider view of how the war on terror for the left has devolved into nothing more than a full-time attack on this administration. In my newspaper it is never mentioned that DiUllio was and is a Democrat--a potential political insurgent--in the White House and that his original words should have been carefully weighed for partisan prejudice right from the start.
Posted by: john at December 11, 2002 4:41 AM