Seen on Facebook:

Hillary Clinton offered an apology to black voters for remarks by her husband after the South Carolina.

The New York senator, who is in a tight race with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, struck several sorry notes at an evening forum sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a group of more than 200 black community newspapers across the country.

Her biggest apology came in response to a question about comments by her husband, Bill Clinton, after the South Carolina primary, which Obama won handily. Bill Clinton said Jesse Jackson also won South Carolina when he ran for president in 1984 and 1988, a comment many viewed as belittling Obama’s success.

”I want to put that in context. You know I am sorry if anyone was offended. It was certainly not meant in any way to be offensive,” Hillary Clinton said. ”We can be proud of both Jesse Jackson and Senator Obama.”

I’m sure she meant it sincerely, but when you include the phrase “if anyone was offended” in an apology, you’re giving yourself an out, as if to say, “if no one was offended, then I’m not apologizing.” It’s only the people who took offense who should accept the apology, putting the burden on them.

That’s not how it works. An apology should be without qualification: no ifs, ands, or buts. It should be simple and sincere, without a dissertation on context and intent, and the longer it takes to get it out and the more qualifiers and explanations that are tagged on, the more the force of the apology and the level of sincerity is diminished. Get it out, mean it, and make amends.

Some people, including Senator Clinton, have a tough time dealing with apologizing.

As first lady and senator, Clinton rarely cedes an inch to her critics. On the issue of her vote to authorize the Iraq war, for instance, she steadfastly has refused to apologize, coming close by saying she regrets it, despite calls from many anti-war voters in the party to make a more explicit mea culpa.

She is probably one of those people who sees apologizing as a sign of weakness; if she apologizes, that means she was wrong, and if she’s wrong, then her critics are right, and that leads to self-doubt, and on and on. But it comes across as false bravado covering for insecurities. In that regard, she’s in good company; history is rife with non-apologies. Richard Nixon never apologized for Watergate; the only thing he was sorry for was that he got caught. George W. Bush has famously never acknowledged that he’s made any mistakes in his administration, and along with him goes Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, or John Bolton, none of whom has had the guts to admit that they got it all horribly wrong in Iraq, Afghanistan, and just about everything else that they’ve touched.

It’s an old lesson, but apparently it has to be repeated: apologizing without qualification is liberating, and it’s amazing how forgiving people are when you do it. It’s admitting that you’re human, prone to make mistakes like everybody else, and rather than tarnish your reputation, it can enhance it. Senator Clinton could learn a few things from Eliot Spitzer. He apologized, he took the blame, he didn’t try to pin his failings on someone else, he didn’t lash out at the media or try to put it in context (whew; I really don’t want to know why he felt he had to pay for sex).

An apology can bruise the ego for a while, but that’s the point. And leave out the If.

I’ve been a fan of Bill Clinton for a long time. I admire his political skills, and the more we see of what the current administration has done, I think history is going to judge his presidency in a favorable light. The man has his faults, to be sure, and on more than one occasion I’ve been embarrassed by his actions. Fortunately, none of them had anything to do with the running of the country, and the same cannot be said of George W. Bush.

That said, I’m in agreement with Glenn Greenwald on the recent spate of stories about the former president’s campaigning on behalf of Hillary Clinton and the conduct of the Clinton campaign in general.

Many Democrats — including progressives — have an ambivalent attitude towards the Clintons despite Hillary’s relatively conservative record since she’s been in the Senate. They distrust their “triangulation” and soul-less political tactics, as expressed most vividly in Hillary’s case by her years-long support of the Iraq War and general support for war-loving policies.

But they also respect the Clintons for being among the very few Democrats of any significance with the willingness and ability to stand up to and defeat the right-wing monster and, most importantly, to recognize its true character. The Clintons’ behavior over this last week does nothing but highlight the absolute worst parts of their character and make any rational person dread the return of the whole Clinton show to the White House — not because of how their political enemies react to them but because of how they, almost addictively, conduct themselves.

Perhaps if Mr. Clinton would remember that it is Hillary that is running for the presidency, not him, and if there was a way that he could stop thinking of himself as her husband — he’s certainly shown that ability before — he might better serve the campaign as a political adviser and not as the aggrieved spouse defending his wife against unfair attacks. In addition, regardless of the merits of his argument comparing the Obama win in South Carolina as being comparable to Jesse Jackson, he had to know that he was kicking a hornet’s nest when he made it, and don’t think for one minute that he didn’t know it.

Notwithstanding Paul Krugman’s point (see below) that no matter who the Democrats nominate they’re going to get the full monty from the Republicans, it doesn’t do anybody any good if this campaign, already seeing some pretty outrageous actions on both sides, gets off the topic of the current state of the union and how to fix it and spends its time on, as Mr. Krugman calls it, “unpleasantness.”

If we’re going to fight, let’s fight about how to get us out of Iraq, the role of government in repairing the nation’s problems, keeping us safe, educating kids, and ensuring that all citizens are treated fairly and with equal rights. If Bill Clinton wants to talk about that on behalf of Hillary, fine. If not, then he should stay out of the way. And remember that if her candidacy goes down in flames, you can be sure who will get the blame.