ATONEMENT IS AN ANCIENT AND ARTful tradition in Washington, when politicians kneel to confess their faults and promise to sin no more. Maybe it was the example of hundreds of thousands of men converging on the capital in a call to genuine repentance that inspired President Clinton and Bob Dole to do some penance themselves last week. But in their case, the gestures of apology wound up looking more shameful than the original sin.
In what some Democrats now consider a pathological pattern, Clinton distanced himself from an achievement he had long defended: the 1993 budget deal he sold as a...
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