If Barack Obama wants some of his problems to go away, he needs to learn to say I'm sorry.
It has been a regrettable trait of the Obama campaign so far (which is reminiscent of the Dukakis reaction to Willie Horton) that it can seemingly never admit when its candidate makes a mistake. An old questionnaire that contradicts a policy stand? Oh, an aide must have done it for him (even though one copy apparently featured Obama's handwritten notes added to an answer). Reverend Wright gives outrageous sermons? Obama must have never been in church to hear them.
The problem with the answers in these cases is that they leave the door open to more factual disputes that keep the story alive and slowly damage the candidate's credibility. If Obama would just apologize and show a tad more humility from time to time, the Republicans would have fewer easy targets to hit, and the rest of us could all move on.
Democrats make the mistake of thinking the attacks on Kerry's Vietnam service or Dukakis's Willie Horton problem were lies. The problem for Dems was that the attacks were true or, at least, disputable. Obama's explanations don't fly.
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