Obama's 'Apology Tour'

By Glenn Kessler

"I think he had made a practice of trying to apologize for America. I personally am proud of America."
--Former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Feb. 20, 2011

"I will not and I will never apologize for America. I don't apologize for America, because I believe in America."
--Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (author of "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness"), Feb. 11, 2011

"Mr. President, stop apologizing for our country."
--Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, Feb. 11, 2011

The Fact Checker senses a campaign theme emerging: Obama the apologizer.

As the above quotes illustrate, it is an article of faith among top Republicans that President Obama has repeatedly apologized for the United States and its behavior. Even more, the argument goes, he does not believe in American strength and greatness. The assertion feeds into a subterranean narrative that Obama, with his exotic, mixed-race background, is not really American in the first place.

The claim that Obama is an apologist for America actually began to take shape shortly after he became president. It had been bubbling in the conservative blogs before Karl Rove, the former political adviser to George W. Bush, published an article titled "The President's Apology Tour" in the Wall Street Journal on April 23, 2009, just three months after Obama took the oath of office.

By June, the conservative Heritage Foundation began running a list: "Barack Obama's Top 10 Apologies: How the President Has Humiliated a Superpower."

Public-opinion polling suggests the idea has resonance among the American public. A December Gallup poll found that only 58 percent of those surveyed agreed that Obama believed the United States has a unique character that makes it the greatest country in the world; 37 percent said he did not. By contrast, 74 percent thought George W. Bush did, 77 percent though Bill Clinton did, and 86 percent thought Ronald Reagan did. Among Republicans, 61 percent thought Obama did not believe in the greatness of America.

Let's look at the evidence.

The Facts

Most of the criticism stems from a series of speeches that Obama made shortly after taking office, when he was trying to introduce himself to the world and also signify a break with the Bush administration with new policies, such as pledging to close the detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay.

This is typical of many new presidents. George W. Bush, for instance, quickly broke with Clinton administration policy on dealings with North Korea, the Kyoto climate change treaty and the international criminal court, to name a few.

Rove built his case around four quotes made by Obama:

Mr. Obama told the French (the French!) that America "has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" toward Europe. In Prague, he said America has "a moral responsibility to act" on arms control because only the U.S. had "used a nuclear weapon." In London, he said that decisions about the world financial system were no longer made by "just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy" -- as if that were a bad thing. And in Latin America, he said the U.S. had not "pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors" because we "failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas."

In none of these cases does Obama actually use a word at all similar to "apologize." The Latin American comment might have resonance with Rove's old boss, since that was Bush's charge against the Clinton administration in the 2000 campaign. The Prague and London quotes are not apologies at all. The Paris quote, which is often cited as an apology, is taken out of context.

In Paris, Obama was trying to rebuild relations with Europe, where opposition to the Iraq war had run high. The quote in Paris often cited by conservatives is this: "In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."

That doesn't sound like much of an apology, more of a statement of fact that few international-relations experts would quarrel with. But Obama was making the case that both sides had misunderstood each other, and so he also said: "But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual, but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what's bad."

The two sentences are a matched pair; there is no apology.

The Heritage Foundation list is also a stretch. Again, nothing akin to the word "apology" is ever used by Obama. In most of these cases, Obama is trying to make a clear distinction with his predecessor, much as Ronald Reagan did with Jimmy Carter, or George W. Bush with Clinton. Guantanamo or the war on terrorism figures in four of the so-called apologies -- and it is noteworthy during the 2000 campaign that Obama's GOP opponent, Sen. John McCain, also had said he would close the facility. Obama's comments express a disagreement over policy, not a distaste for the nation.

Another Heritage example is a speech Obama gave in April 2009 to the Turkish parliament, in which he was trying to urge that country to come to terms with its tragic history with the Armenians: "The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history. Facing the Washington Monument that I spoke of is a memorial of Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed those who were enslaved even after Washington led our Revolution."

But compare what Obama said to what George W. Bush said at Senegal's Goree Island in 2003. Bush called the U.S. constitution flawed and said that America is still troubled by the legacy of slavery. This does not seem like an apology, either -- but it is even more sharply framed than Obama's comments.

We can fairly judge the past by the standards of President John Adams, who called slavery "an evil of callosal magnitude." We can discern eternal standards in the deeds of William Wilberforce and John Quincy Adams, and Harriet Beecher Stowe and Abraham Lincoln. These men and women, black and white, burned with a zeal for freedom, and they left behind a different and better nation. Their moral vision caused Americans to examine our hearts, to correct our Constitution, and to teach our children the dignity and equality of every person of every race. By a plan known only to Providence, the stolen sons and daughters of Africa helped to awaken the conscience of America. The very people traded into slavery helped to set America free. My nation's journey toward justice has not been easy and it is not over. The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times. But however long the journey, our destination is set: liberty and justice for all.

Why would Obama's comment on slavery be considered an apology and not Bush's?

Similarly, Bush's secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice suggested in Cairo in 2005 that U.S. policies were directly responsible for the terrorism that had struck the United States: "Our policies to try and promote what we thought was stability in the Middle East had actually allowed, underneath, a very malignant, meaning cancerous, form of extremism to grow up underneath because people didn't have outlets for their political views."

Obama, meanwhile, has refused to apologize for past CIA meddling in Latin America. "I'm interested in going forward, not looking backward," Obama said after talks with Chilean leader Michelle Bachelet. "I think that the United States has been an enormous force for good in the world. I think there have been times where we've made mistakes. But I think that what is important is looking at what our policies are today, and what my administration intends to do in cooperating with the region."

But Bush on several occasions apologized to foreign governments for actions taken by U.S. soldiers, such as for the shooting of a Koran or prisoner abuse in Iraq. "I told him I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families," Bush said at a news conference with Jordan's King Abdullah.

Finally, critics point to another April 2009 statement by Obama as evidence that he does not believe in American exceptionalism.

Asked by a British reporter if he thought the United States was uniquely qualified to lead the world, Obama answered: "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." As Romney put it in his book, this "is another way of saying he doesn't believe it all."

But Obama was just getting warmed up. His very next sentence was: "I'm enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world." Obama continued: "If you think of our current situation, the United States remains the largest economy in the world. We have unmatched military capability. And I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional."

In the early months of his presidency, Obama had a way of backing into his answers, starting off with a humble tone ("just as I suspect the Brits...") that some supporters of American power may have found grating. But snippets of his answers do not do justice to his complete remarks.

The Pinocchio Test

The claim that Obama repeatedly has apologized for the United States is not borne out by the facts, especially if his full quotes are viewed in context.

Obama often was trying to draw a rhetorical distinction between his policies and that of President Bush, a common practice when the presidency changes parties. The shift in policies, in fact, might have been more dramatic from Clinton to Bush than from Bush to Obama, given how Obama has largely maintained Bush's approach to fighting terrorism.

In other cases, Obama's quotes have been selectively trimmed for political purposes. Or they were not much different than sentiments expressed by Bush or his secretary of state. Republicans may certainly disagree with Obama's handling of foreign policy or particular policies he has pursued, but they should not invent a storyline that does not appear to exist.

Note to GOP speechwriters and campaign ad makers: The apology tour never happened.

Four Pinocchios