Should they have extended the hand that was bitten in return?
The Rapid City Journal is reporting this morning that Whalen Campaign manager Lee Breard has offered his apology to Congresswoman Herseth about the homewrecker comment. And the Herseth camp is accepting it about as I thought they would:
It might sound harsh, but it's a political campaign. It's a constant and continual game of one-upsmanship. Herseth's crew will likely take the apology and use it as an example to paint the Whalen campaign one way or another. They see the scab on this one, so they're going to keep picking at it until they see blood.
An honest admission of a mistake - which is an honorable thing - and we can already see that the other side is going to use it negatively.
Lee Breard said he contacted Herseth’s South Dakota staff Monday to see if he could call her personally to apologize. But Herseth was busy with public engagements and couldn’t take the call, and staffers were hesitant to give Breard her cell-phone number, spokesman Russ Levsen said Tuesday.Read it all here. I'm not necessarily a believer in offering apologies to your political opponents. Why? Because of what happened here. Lee offered his personal apology, and Levsen took the opportunity and snapped at his fingers while the hand was extended. I knew that was going to happen.
“We appreciate his call and offered to pass along any message he may have by phone or e-mail,” Levsen said.
Breard said Tuesday that he preferred to make an apology directly to Herseth by telephone.
“I don’t think I’m going to e-mail. When you apologize to somebody, it shouldn’t be through e-mail or a letter. It should be one person talking to another,” Breard said. “I want to apologize personally for the comment I made. It was overzealous, just out of bounds.”
and...
Levsen said Breard appeared to be making only half an apology, however.
“We appreciate his willingness to recognize that the home-wrecker part of it was untrue and wrong to circulate,” Levsen said. “But sending around unsubstantiated rumors and lies isn’t fact-finding. It’s dirty politics. It’s unfortunate that Lee Breard is only apologizing for some of the lies he sent around about Stephanie Herseth’s personal life.”
It might sound harsh, but it's a political campaign. It's a constant and continual game of one-upsmanship. Herseth's crew will likely take the apology and use it as an example to paint the Whalen campaign one way or another. They see the scab on this one, so they're going to keep picking at it until they see blood.
An honest admission of a mistake - which is an honorable thing - and we can already see that the other side is going to use it negatively.
Comments
The dig back at Breard wasn't, especially for someone who is supposed to be the bigger person.
By the way, what else is Breard supposed to apologize for, Mr. Levsen?
And why in the hell should Stephanie call that little weasel Breard?
PP, don't turn yourself into a partisan hack just because November 7th is coming up. You know damn well that Thune wouldn't be giving his personal cell number to the other side if this happened to him, and his spinmeister would have been saying exactly the same thing about half an apology. Where's the apology about spreading the rumor Stephanie was pregnant??
Dirty, stupid politics from the Whalen campaign.
That's the job of a spokesperson, republican or democrat. It's not a matter of honor or class; Bread is a lackluster strategist and Russ is a talented one. There are plenty of cases where the GOP has better spinners on their side, this just wasn't one of them.
Maybe the insinuation that the Congresswoman was pregnant. Maybe sending in his candidate to keep asking her in person if it was true. There seems to be plenty to apologize for here. If Breard wasn’t an idiot, he could have avoided this whole situation.
I like that he made some effort to appologize, but he and Whalen still come off looking like jerks.
His continued presence as Whalen's campaign manager after a major league screw up only highlights the fact that no one else has any faith in Whalen's candidacy.
Apology or no, Breard didn't have what it took in the first place.
It's one thing to dig up dirt on an opponent, but telling out-and-out lies is quite another. The fact that Breard waited two weeks before apologizing makes his apology pretty weak. It's bad politics by just about anyone's standards.
Breard specifically refused to apologize for some of the stuff he circulated...and that fact is necessary to understanding the Herseth response - what you call snapping at his fingers. Herseth accepted the conditional apology that was offered. Breard kept spinning that the rest of it was just above the board "fact-finding" for which he would not apologize.
What's Herseth supposed to say, "I accept both the apology that you did offer as well as the one you didn't"?