President Obama showed that it was possible to apologise with good grace over his appointment of Tom Daschle and now the masters of the financial universe are falling over themselves to follow his lead. Somehow he turned the fact that he “screwed up” to his advantage, though how many times he can get away with this ruse in future is open to question.
The sight of the men from RBS and HBOS making their excuses for “screwing up” the economy of an entire country was pretty hard to watch. The difference is that people like Obama.
At times like this you have to turn to the tabloids to fnd an expresssion of real fury. Sue Carroll put it rather well in her Mirror column today. I wonder if the bankers were reading her before they went before the Treasury Selct Committee today. “Instead of the waffling, buck-passing or the usual catalogue of excuses, Obama was man enough to admit he was at fault,” she said. “That’s more than our pathetic league of bankers have managed to do. Or one British politician.” This is a little unfair on Alistair Darling, but we get the point.
Now word reaches The Bright Stuff that the man who has never knowingly apologised for anything is preparing his very own “mea culpa”. I am told that Whitehall officials have been ordered to make a compilation DVD of Obama’s various apologies to the American TV networks to be studied by the Prime Minister.
The idea of Gordon Brown practising a humble self-deprecating manner in front of the mirror based on what he has seen on his training DVD doesn’t bear thinking about. But then again… maybe it does.
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