Responsibility also isn’t in her vocabulary.
Via Daily Beast:
Here are a few words that usually appear in apologies: sorry, regret, mistake and “I apologize.”
Here are a few words that don’t appear in Hillary Clinton’s statement on why she overruled the advice of her 2008 campaign chair to keep a man accused of sexual harassment on staff: sorry, regret, mistake, and “I apologize.”
For contrast, here’s the apology Clinton gave to ABC over her use of a private email server, months after the server was exposed. “As I look back at it now, even though it was allowed, I should have used two accounts. That was a mistake. I’m sorry about that. I take responsibility.”
How is she still so bad at this? Why is she still so bad at this?
Perhaps the answer is because Clinton has spent decades and politics and if there is one thing that politicians are trained to do, it is to never apologize. In politics, apologizing is treated as emasculated weakness. Mitt Romney wrote an entire book titled “No Apology.” Barack Obama was castigated for years for going on, what was labeled, an “apology tour.” Donald Trump has built an entire brand around never admitting he’s ever wrong.
Saying you’re at fault is treated as a form of career suicide even if, fundamentally, it is an act of introspection and fortitude.
Which brings us to Clinton, who seems preternaturally concerned at all times with exhibiting the most superficial kind of “strength.” In 2008, her campaign faith adviser Burns Strider allegedly harassed another campaign employee repeatedly. Clinton’s female campaign chair advised her to fire him. Instead, Clinton reassigned the target of Strider’s harassment and kept Strider on staff, directing him to counseling. Strider would later get fired from another job for doing the same thing he was alleged to have done while working for Clinton. […]
Clinton’s ex-campaign manager Patti Solis-Doyle made the media rounds early this week.
In the process, she did what Clinton should have: expressing regret over how the situation was handled and over her failure to do more.
Clinton, who holds herself out as a champion of women, should have addressed her own shortcomings in this moment as well. For the good of progress for the moment we’re in, she should have either acknowledged that what she did was a mistake or defended her decision. If she believes now that it was a misstep at the time, she should have apologized for making it and explained why she’s contrite now but wasn’t then. If it wasn’t a misstep, she should have defended her actions.