STAR TRIBUNE EDITORIAL: JOHNSON HAS MORE APOLOGIES TO MAKE
Editorial: Johnson has more apologies to make
Senate leader crossed a line in comments about the court.
Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson did some apologizing Wednesday, and needs to do some more.
The DFL senator from Willmar got caught on tape implying that he had assurances about the outcome of possible gay marriage litigation from state Supreme Court justices that the justices vow and he now says he does not have.
Even if Johnson was only voicing his own inference from his acquaintance with several justices and a casual conversation with one of them, he was out of line. He called into question the impartiality of the court -- a serious blunder for which he apologized on Wednesday.
He also created an impression that was, at best, misleading to his audience -- a gathering of his fellow clergy in New London, Minn. Johnson, a Lutheran minister, owes his peers an apology. He owes one also to the thousands of Minnesotans who subsequently heard his words on tape.
His allies in the effort to keep a same-sex union ban out of the Constitution deserve to hear a mea culpa too. That effort is undercut when its Senate leader's veracity is in doubt.
But promoters of a constitutional ban on same-sex unions are overreaching when they accuse Johnson of tampering with the judicial process.
Nothing in Johnson's words in New London or any statements since, by Johnson or the justices, reveals such an attempt. Neither has Johnson's error in any way strengthened the case for permanently embedding discrimination into the state's legal foundation.
As journalists can attest, many politicians are given to speaking in a way that makes fact, speculation, inference and opinion difficult to parse.
After 30 years in public office, Johnson is fluent in that kind of rhetoric. But he used it inappropriately in New London, leaving an impression that stretched the truth.
As he should know better than most, confession and apology are good for the soul. Source: Star Tribune, March 17, 2006
Senate leader crossed a line in comments about the court.
Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson did some apologizing Wednesday, and needs to do some more.
The DFL senator from Willmar got caught on tape implying that he had assurances about the outcome of possible gay marriage litigation from state Supreme Court justices that the justices vow and he now says he does not have.
Even if Johnson was only voicing his own inference from his acquaintance with several justices and a casual conversation with one of them, he was out of line. He called into question the impartiality of the court -- a serious blunder for which he apologized on Wednesday.
He also created an impression that was, at best, misleading to his audience -- a gathering of his fellow clergy in New London, Minn. Johnson, a Lutheran minister, owes his peers an apology. He owes one also to the thousands of Minnesotans who subsequently heard his words on tape.
His allies in the effort to keep a same-sex union ban out of the Constitution deserve to hear a mea culpa too. That effort is undercut when its Senate leader's veracity is in doubt.
But promoters of a constitutional ban on same-sex unions are overreaching when they accuse Johnson of tampering with the judicial process.
Nothing in Johnson's words in New London or any statements since, by Johnson or the justices, reveals such an attempt. Neither has Johnson's error in any way strengthened the case for permanently embedding discrimination into the state's legal foundation.
As journalists can attest, many politicians are given to speaking in a way that makes fact, speculation, inference and opinion difficult to parse.
After 30 years in public office, Johnson is fluent in that kind of rhetoric. But he used it inappropriately in New London, leaving an impression that stretched the truth.
As he should know better than most, confession and apology are good for the soul. Source: Star Tribune, March 17, 2006
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home