For Hillary Clinton, running for president means never having to say you're sorry.
We the people of this nation first got a hard look at this trait when it came to her vote authorizing the president to use force in the run-up to the Iraq invasion five years ago.
That Senate vote was, as everyone knew at the time, a green light for President Bush, bound and determined to avenge the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 on a dictator who had zero to do with the terrorist attacks. Nor did Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, have any weapons of mass destruction, which was the major premise given for the war by the Bush administration's cabal of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.
Clinton, the junior senator from New York, cast her vote with the majority, saying later she never thought the president would misuse the war power granted him. I don't know what I mind more, the vote or the disingenuous reason she gave for it subsequently.
For a woman as astute as she, her judgment failed her at a critical hour in the nation's history. The intentions of the president and his men were plain to see, and it's hard to believe she was such a poor judge of what was to come. It's not as if it's hard to read Bush's mind or character,
Nevertheless, throughout her presidential campaign, candidate Clinton has steadfastly refused to give ground on this issue, perhaps because she doesn't want to give an inch on national security. In debates, she defends the ill-fated vote as "based on what we knew at the time," not even on "what we thought we knew at the time."
In other words, strong women can't be wrong, at least not in public. They don't much like it in private, either. Take it from me, they run in the family. This is a like a china pattern that has defined the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton. So far it's been unbreakable.
The second stark example of Clinton's refusal to back down surfaced over immigration and driver's licenses. In one early debate, she was heard to sympathize with the governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer, who proposed that immigrants in New York receive drivers' license. This naturally led her opponents to believe she sided with the governor, until she quickly distanced herself from his proposal, saying she did not necessarily support it. And she kept her straight-faced composure even as she caused bewilderment by seeming to take two positions at once.
Shortly after the debate, Clinton clarified her view against driver's licenses as an immigration policy -- not exactly a brave stand, but one that she embraced as if there had never been any ambiguity or doubt about it.
Finally, the internal jostlings in her campaign recently seemed to suggest to anyone paying attention that she knew it was time for a change. In the shake-up, the faithful White House aide Maggie Williams was named as the new chief of staff as a signal to donors and supporters that all would be well again. At least that was the story line that made the most sense.
But Hillary Clinton had a different take. She told the press that the outgoing Patti Solis Doyle had made her own decision to leave when it was widely reported she was fired. She acted as if the top staff change was predetermined, not an emergency response to a campaign losing some of its campfire. In other words, she had control of the situation.
In fairness, when a New Hampshire campaign official made allegations about Barack Obama's past marijuana or drug use, she fired him and apologized to Obama privately on the airport tarmac in Washington. She did the right thing there.
That's a side of her we'd like to see show up more often.
A cool customer, our Hillary, one that would rather do anything other than apologize for something she did or said in public. It would probably be agony for her. It's a straitjacket of sorts she and other strong women have developed as a survival strategy in public life. As we see, however, that leaves little room for reflection, growth and a willingness to face past mistakes. And it can harden into arrogance.
Speaking strictly for me, a little humility wouldn't hurt Hillary.
Jamie Stiehm is a writer who lives in Baltimore.