today : fessin up

Mr Obama impresses me more and more. It was telling this week that everyone jumped on his comment that he 'screwed up' over the Tom Daschle problem. Many people seemed to take great pleasure in pointing the finger at him and treating his admission as some kind of revelation of systemic failure. It reminded me of someone whom I worked with who couldn't ever accept and apology. Several times stuff went awry and I owned up to my part in it, following my confession with an apology. Each time, I was reminded endlessly for days and sometimes weeks, both directly and indirectly, that I had screwed up. And we're talking here about me promising to collect her mail from the pigeonholes but being sidetracked and forgetting, or not putting a class set of Macbeth's back in the stock room, not appointing senior government officials.

I think Obama fessing up took the press by surprise. They are so used to the usual way of doing stuff that they can't handle it. Their modus operandi is to face down a politican who is playing never apologise, never explain and try and get them to do both. Obama stole their clothes, ironically by behaving exactly in the way the press has been begging polticians to behave for decades.