Barbara Kay: Redford sees no ‘I’ in ‘mistakes were made’

Former premier Alison Redford

 Even in distant Montreal, I can almost hear the great whoosh of relief emanating from Alberta’s Progressive Conservative party caucus at former Premier Alison Redford’s announcement Tuesday of her retirement from politics.

The 49-year old MLA’s relinquishment of her Calgary-Elbow seat comes just four days after Premier Dave Hancock received an advance copy of Auditor General Merwan Saher’s investigation into multiple allegations of Ms Redford’s cavalier waste of taxpayers’ money in the service of her own convenience and comfort. Even the relatively elephant-skinned Ms Redford finally blinked in the increasingly brilliant glare of national opprobrium.

The header in the article in the National Post announcing Ms Redford’s stepping down was: “Alison Redford resigns her seat, saying she made ‘mistakes’ in ‘hindsight’.” But that was not quite what she said. She said, “I recognize mistakes were made along the way.” The “hindsight” part was attached to the “many things I would have done differently.” To her credit, she added, “I accept responsibility for all the decisions I have made.” (Still, “decisions” – since they incorporate both good and bad – are a lighter, far vaguer burden than “mistakes.”)

She wasn’t actually evading the truth, but when she used the passive voice – “mistakes were made” – rather than the active-voiced “I made mistakes,” Ms Redford betrayed a certain difficulty in acknowledging her guilt. It’s easier to say, “I would do, or would have done, things differently” (hypothetical) than “I made mistakes” (reality: I screwed up).

It may seem to be a trifling matter, and yet the linguistic manner in which leaders express apologies says a great deal about how much personal responsibility they are willing to take for their errors in judgment. When I see the passive voice being used in a public apology, I take it as a red flag  that the contrition being expressed is considered a politically necessary or expedient thing to do, but does not reflect a sincerely felt emotion.

In his 2001 book, Life at the Bottom, cultural critic Theodore Dalrymple revisits his years as a psychiatrist in the prison system of Birmingham, England, ministering to the addicts and criminals of the underclass. He found that a common denominator amongst this failed population was a tendency to blame their own bad choices on others: the “system,” society, or their bad luck in that the victims of their crimes put themselves in harm’s way. Dalrymple remembers that in three stabbings, two of which resulted in death, the perpetrators described the act with the identical words, “The knife went in,” as though the inanimate knives determined the outcome rather than the hand guiding the knife.

I am obviously not suggesting Ms Redford’s “mistakes” were in any way comparable to such crimes. Rather I am saying that the instinct for personal exculpation knows no boundaries of status. People who think the regular rules don’t apply to them do not always shed their delusions just because they get caught. When forced to own up, they instinctively detach their actions from their own moral agency.

They become “mistakes” that … happened. A costly airplane trip to South Africa was chartered, a flight manifest was filled with ghost passengers, a luxury “sky palace” was commissioned for the new Federal Building in Edmonton, a child’s friend was invited on a publicly funded trip. Linguistically absent in all these revelations is the individual human solipsism that created this pattern of unethical action.

When real leaders make mistakes, they own them. Nobody needs a spin doctor to help someone who is truly remorseful express his regret. When they have done bad things, truly remorseful leaders don’t adduce the pressures of work, the diseases they have (if your disease or “disease” is impeding your ability to serve, you should already have resigned) or say things like, “I am sorry if I offended Canadians.” They especially never use the word “if,” which implies that the problem lies with those offended for failing to grasp the leader’s true intentions. They say “I am sorry that I offended Canadians.”

And truly remorseful leaders – those who have been humbled and internally changed by the public exposure of their human imperfection — instinctively reach for the active voice when they are admitting their mistakes. “I made mistakes.” Why is that so hard for some politicians to say? I think we know why.

National Post