Has anybody else noticed the popularity of the “honest mistake” in news stories lately?
That was the excuse Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales gave the Senate Judiciary Committee for the way he and his Justice Department aides handled the controversial replacement of eight federal attorneys with Bush loyalists.
“I made mistakes in not ensuring that these U.S. attorneys received more dignified treatment,” Mr. Gonzales said in his written testimony. “Others within the Department of Justice also made mistakes. As far as I know, these were honest mistakes of perception and judgment and not intentional acts of misconduct.”
The excuse is bipartisan. In July 2004, Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton’s former national security adviser trotted it out to explain why he snuck classified documents concerning terrorism out of the National Archives. An archivist said he spied Berger wrapping a document around his ankle under his sock.
“Last year, when I was in the Archives reviewing documents, I made an honest mistake,” Berger said in 2005.
Not honest enough. The following April, “Trouser-Gate” ended with Berger’s guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of purloining and destroying the documents. Besides a stiff $50,000 fine and losing his national security clearance, Berger’s penance also included a stint of honest work: 100 hours cleaning garbage along local highways.
”If I’ve done something wrong, it was an honest mistake.” So said George R. Zoffinger, head of the agency that runs The Meadowlands in New Jersey, when he was confronted with evidence that the authority paid fees exceeding a million bucks to a law firm where Zoffinger’s son worked. “I’ll pay the price,” Dad said. True to his word, he resigned in February.
Even rock bands seek redemption using the “honest mistake” approach.
Check out the lyrics from “An Honest Mistake,” the debut single from indie rock band “The Bravery.”
They don’t mean a thing to you
They move right through you
Just like your breath
But sometimes
I still think of you
And I just wanted to
Just wanted you to know
My old friend…
I swear I never meant for this
I never meant…
Don’t look at me that way
It was an honest mistake
Don’t look at me that way
It was an honest mistake
An honest mistake
Sometimes
I forget I’m still awake
I fuck up and say these things out loud
My old friend…
I swear I never meant for this
I never meant…
Don’t look at me that way
It was an honest mistake
Don’t look at me that way
It was an honest mistake
An honest mistake
Don’t look at me that way
It was an honest mistake
Don’t look at me that way
It was an honest mistake
An honest mistake
But none of these examples answer a central question: What is an honest mistake?
A federal judge in New York City provided one answer earlier this month during an insider-trading case. Before Judge Edward Nottingham dispatched jurors to settle the fate of Joseph P. Nacchio, the former chief executive of Qwest Communications International who was accused of selling off $101 million in stocks before company troubles became public, he issued instructions that in order to convict, all jurors had to agree that Nacchio intended to defraud investors. “The good faith of the defendant is a complete defense,” Nottingham said. “An honest mistake in judgment does not rise to the level of a crime.”
Maybe not, Your Honor. But the phrase sounds like the prose equivalent of a flat note. Perhaps that’s why the jury convicted Nacchio.
For guidance, I sought the opinion of this space’s favorite style maven, Ben Yagoda, author of two books on supple wordsmithing, “The Sound on the Page: Style and Voice in Writing,” and his latest, “When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better And/Or Worse.” Here’s Yagoda’s take on the “honest mistake.”
That is, people who have committed an act that has turned out to have bad consequences often find themselves wanting to claim that they acted innocently — that they had good or at worst neutral intentions, and they were unaware of the way they would be perceived or the repercussions the act would have.
As you note, this doesn’t have much or anything to do with honesty. So why do people say “honest mistake” instead of “well-intentioned mistake” or “innocent mistake” or something more accurate?
I would hazard the guess that it’s because “honest mistake” sounds more forceful than any alternative, first because it has a stronger rhythm, and second because honesty is a very powerful value in our society.
It certainly sounds better than “well-intentioned,” which is damning with faint praise, and “innocent,” about which the only positive thing one can say is that it’s better than being guilty.
If you’ve ever made an honest mistake, confessions are welcome. As are attacks or defenses of honest mistakers, either by deed or word. Is this post just an honest mistake?
