Ross Douthat speculated in a tweet Monday<\/a> that it could. He even proposed the outlines of the apology:<\/p>\n“‘Before I was married I was a sinner and a creep. I beg the young woman’s forgiveness. It was decades ago, and I ask you to judge me on the good husband and father and grandfather I’ve become.’ Etc”<\/p>\n
I think Moore\u2019s apology would need to go further. He would need to apologize also for his silence about this for decades, that allowed these women to suffer privately. Acknowledging the impact of his sins on their lives would be a sign that he \u201cgets it.\u201d We might also appreciate hearing something like, \u201cI thank God every day for his forgiveness, and ask God every day for the grace to conform my behavior to His will.\u201d If he\u2019s doing anything else to hold himself accountable, it\u2019d be good to mention that too.<\/p>\n
He\u00a0should apologize only if he did it, and if he’s sorry. Even so,\u00a0an apology now might not salvage his campaign. But it still might be a good thing to do.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I usually write about public apologies, but this week I\u2019m thinking about an apology that hasn\u2019t happened: what if Roy Moore offered a public apology for his past transgressions? Could that save his Senate campaign? Several women have come forward in the last week to accuse Roy Moore of sexual misconduct decades ago.\u00a0Judge Moore has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":507,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions\/507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}