The Plum Line - White House apologizes to Shirley Sherrod
This is a good start: At the press briefing just now, Robert Gibbs apeared to extend a heartfelt apology to Shirley Sherrod on behalf of the Obama administration, and promised a look at what went wrong.
Interestingly, though, he sidestepped a question about whether fear of the conservative media drove the decision to fire Sherrod before the facts were all in.
Here’s what Gibbs said, referring to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack:
The secretary is trying to reach her. I hope the secretary reaches her soon, and they have an opportunity to talk. The Secretary will apologize for the actions that have taken place over the past 24 to 36 hours. And on behalf of the administration, I offer our apologies.
Gibbs also seemed to promise some kind of reckoning as to how the White House botched this mess, though he stopped short of promising anything official:
I think everybody has to go back and look at what has happened over the past 24 to 36 hours, and ask ourselves how we got into this. How did we not ask the right questions? How did you all not ask the right questions? How did other people not ask the right questions?
When asked directly by a reporter whether the administration had “overreacted” because the White House is “afraid” of the conservative media, Gibbs brushed off the question.
It’s good that the White House has now publicly acknowledged real wrongdoing. It would probably be even better, given the passion and anger that this story has unleashed, if something similar came from Obama himself. Hearing from him would go a long way towards reassuring people that the White House has learned something from this whole mess.
My bet is word will leak soon enough that Obama called Sherrod and personally apologized to her for what happened.
As for whether the White House learned anything from this disaster, the real tell will be how it handles itself the next time the right wing media gins up a fake controversy “proving” the Obama administration is riddled with rampant anti-white racism.
By Greg Sargent | July 21, 2010; 3:05 PM ET