behind the news

“Never Explain, Never Apologize”

February 24, 2005

Doug Wead, the man who released tapes of his private conversations with President Bush, has had a tough week. After the New York Times ran a story about the tapes on Sunday, pundits quickly pointed out that Wead had a book to sell — and so his claim that he was merely acting in the interests of “history” wasn’t terribly credible. Facing a barrage of criticism, Wead retreated yesterday. “I would rather be a good man with mediocre book sales, than a mediocre man with big book sales,” he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. On his Web site, he wrote that, contrary to what he told the Times, he “know[s] very well that personal relationships are more important than history,” and pledged to direct future proceeds from the book to charity.

As so often occurs, the apology didn’t help. In fact, it blew up in his face (see Jordan, Eason). If Wead had merely cut off communication with the press after the initial Times story, he might have quickly faded from the public consciousness, replaced as water cooler fodder by the Pope’s illness and the saga of Paris Hilton’s Sidekick. Instead, his apology seems to have upset critics as much as his decision to share the tapes. After playing Wead’s “good man”/”mediocre man” clip, Jon Stewart, in a long, mocking segment on Wead, quipped, “Would you settle for ‘douchebag with a library card?'” On CNN’s “American Morning” today, ornery everyman Jack Cafferty looked as though he’d swallowed something distasteful as he discussed Wead’s apology, suggesting that it came “because the book sales didn’t improve very much,” before stopping himself from saying something worse. He left that to the bloggers, who today are, of course, piling on.

So it appears that the hapless Wead has learned more from this week’s events than just the importance of keeping personal relationships personal. He has also learned that being a public figure means never having to say you’re sorry. Or, rather, that a public apology only adds to the appetite for your further humiliation. There’s a reason that reporters have such a hard time getting public officials, including President Bush, to seriously admit a mistake or make an apology. In this age, that just adds fuel to the fire and gives critics an excuse to slam you for not sticking to your guns — an offense that often inflames them even more than the original transgression.

Too bad Wead never managed to record Bush talking about how to deal with a media firestorm. He could have used the lesson.

–Brian Montopoli

Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.