Accepting Responsibility, With an Asterisk

In testimony about hurricane relief, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff pointed fingers elsewhere. (By Robert A. Reeder -- The Washington Post)

President Bush in 2000 ushered in the Era of Personal Responsibility. Yesterday ushered in the Era of Qualified Personal Responsibility.

In hours-long testimony before a Senate committee, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he took the blame for the department's failures responding to Hurricane Katrina. "I am responsible for the Department of Homeland Security," came the inevitable claim. "I'm accountable and accept responsibility for the performance of the entire department."

At the same time, Vice President Cheney, breaking four days of silence since accidentally shooting a man on Saturday, was scheduling a confessional on Fox News. "You can't blame anybody else," Cheney told Brit Hume. "I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend."

But, try though they might, neither Chertoff nor Cheney could come up with much in the way of what he had done wrong.

"I have to say that the idea that this department and this administration and the president were somehow detached from Katrina is simply not correct," Chertoff testified, contradicting a House committee report released yesterday that found the secretary exercised his responsibilities "late, ineffectively, or not at all."

Cheney, similarly, said the way he handled disclosure of the shooting -- leaving a private citizen to announce it to a local newspaper the next day -- was spot-on. "I thought that was the right call," he said. "I still do."

Since Bush won the presidency in 2000 with a promise to usher in a "new era of personal responsibility," a public acceptance of culpability is de rigueur when something goes wrong.

But admitting mistakes is an entirely different matter. That could convey weakness and, as such, is to be avoided entirely. Hours after branding the federal response to Katrina "unacceptable," for example, Bush qualified that by saying, "I am satisfied with the response. I'm not satisfied with all the results."

Cheney, speaking to Fox News yesterday, performed a similar routine. He offered a stark claim of responsibility. "Well, ultimately, I'm the guy who pulled the trigger that fired the round that hit Harry."

But in the same interview, Cheney pointed out that "there was a little bit of a gully there, so he was down a little ways before land level. . . . And the sun was directly behind him. That affected the vision, too, I'm sure."

And the vice president admitted no fault in creating the four-day firestorm. "I'm comfortable with the way we did it, obviously," he said. "You can disagree with that, and some of the White House press corps clearly do."

Cheney stuck by his decision to have the ranch owner make the announcement ("she was the most credible one") and said that "I can't say" the incident might change his love of hunting.