Admissions

I'm on a listserve where someone mentioned, as people tend to do, disquiet over the fact that Hillary Clinton "won't admit she was wrong" to vote for the war. It reminds me, once again, that I think many more people need to seriously consider the possibility that this isn't an instance of her stubbornly refusing to "admit" that she was wrong nearly so much as it is a case of her not believing she was wrong just as, for example, Michael O'Hanlon doesn't think he was wrong to have supported the war. Lots of people who supported the war don't think they were wrong to have supported the war, Hillary Clinton doesn't say she thinks she was wrong to have supported the war, and I've never seen any serious reporting that indicates that she thinks she was wrong to have supported the war.

The biggest inquiry I've seen into the question of why Clinton won't apologize for having supported the war was done by Michael Crowley wherein he concluded that she probably won't "admit" that she was wrong because she thinks she did the right thing. It's a subtle distinction, but I think it's worth keeping in mind both for what it may hint about how she'll govern and also for how it's going to play out in a general election campaign.