Burriss: About political apologies

By LARRY BURRISS

In the current political climate, when is an apology not an apology? And if you are a politician, how do we know if your apology is real or just political theater?

Of course, mediated public apologies, or rather non-apologies are nothing new, but there are a couple of presidential apologies that have interesting coincidences.

Let's go all the way back to Sept. 23, 1944. In a speech carried by every American radio network, President Roosevelt responded directly to Republican attacks on his policies. One of the charges was Roosevelt had sent a Navy destroyer to Alaska to bring home his pet dog, Fala, which had supposedly been left behind after a presidential visit.

In the speech, Roosevelt said he wasn't particularly concerned about the personal attacks, but Fala, to quote the president, "was furious."

Curiously, it was Orson Welles, who had so effectively used radio in the "War of the Worlds" broadcast, who told the joke to the president, who then had it written into the final version of the speech.

Exactly eight years later vice presidential candidate Richard Nixon was facing charges he had benefited from an $18,000 trust fund. So serious were the charges that presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower was considering dropping Nixon from the ticket.

Nixon accounted for the money in the fund, and noted he had received a gift, a dog named Checkers, from a constituent, and this particular gift would not be returned. Nixon later admitted he added the Checkers reference as an inside joke related to the Fala speech.

Over the years we have seen numerous presidential apologies delivered to the public via radio and television. In 1961 President Kennedy apologized for the Bay of Pigs and through 2013 when President Obama apologized for problems with the Affordable Care Act.

But probably nothing can compare with two dogs on radio and television that saved two political careers.