Mark Hertsgaard (Salon): How Bush could save his presidency/why he won't

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Dated Wednesday October 15

How Bush could save his presidency -- and why he won't
The president needs to apologize for Iraq -- but he's constitutionally incapable of admitting he was wrong.
By Mark Hertsgaard

The lesson of every presidential scandal in modern American history is that it's the coverup, not the crime, that kills you. Nixon and Watergate, Reagan and Iran-contra, Clinton and Monica Lewinsky -- each president might have avoided disgrace if only he had promptly admitted his misdeeds so the country could forgive him and move on. Instead, each man dragged his drama out by telling lies that invited first disbelief, then ridicule, and eventually demands for censure.
George W. Bush is now on the verge of making the same mistake. Like Clinton, Reagan and Nixon before him, Bush's problem is that he has lied to the American people, and the question hanging over the future of his presidency is whether he will have to fess up.
Clinton and Reagan did. Reagan salvaged his presidency by giving a nationally televised Oval Office speech admitting that "my heart still tells me we didn't trade arms for hostages, but the facts show otherwise." Clinton avoided removal from office by confessing during a prime-time television speech to an "inappropriate" relationship with Lewinsky (Clinton's apology was so lame and late, however, that he still had to endure the humiliation of impeachment). Consummate politicians, both Reagan and Clinton chose to endure the temporary shame of apology in order to keep their job as the most powerful man on earth.
But George W. Bush is unlikely to swallow his pride, and that's what will bring him down. Bush seems temperamentally more akin to Richard Nixon, who held to his increasingly dubious protestations of innocence until the bitter end of Watergate and was duly driven from office. Bush is now tempting the same fate.

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Mark Hertsgaard is the author of On Bended Knee:The Press and the Reagan Presidency