Talk:Mistakes were made/Archives/2013

The New York Times / Clinton / Whitewater citation

Mea culpa. Here's the correct quote and citation, excerpted from Newsweek Magazine, and dated one week later than the New York Times's own story:

"Hillary: `I made mistakes.'" by Eleanor Clift, Newsweek Magazine, 1994/03/21, volume 123, issue 12

Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: In trying to look at how this mess reached this level, it seems as though Vince Foster's death has a lot to do with it. Do you see a connection there?

CLINTON: I don't know. I think that mistakes were made along the way in handling this. I have learned a lot about the needs of the media and how they kind of make stories important. I suppose that in today's atmosphere any unanswered questions are going to be grist for the mill. I've tried to learn a lot about suicide and particularly about depression ever since Vince's death-a lot of us here in the White House have. We've passed around books. We don't have any answers either. But we don't presume to try to make up answers. I just want this to be put to rest for his family's sake and for the sake of all of us who were his friends. It is extremely painful to have this USE d as a political football by people. It is really unfair to his family particularly. But I guess I now understand why, in the face of a tragedy. some people will want to make up their own answer because they can't deal with what are often life's unanswerable mysteries.

NEWSWEEK: You uttered the magic phrase "mistakes were made." Do you regard yourself as having been responsible for any of those?

CLINTON: Oh, sure. Hindsight's always 20-20. I never would have participated in the investment in the first place. Of course, I would have tried to get everybody to focus on it sooner and earlier to try to deal with. So I think that of course I made mistakes. That's part of the learning process you go through when you've never been accused of doing anything wrong before.

Walter Dufresne (talk) 12:56, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Whitewater Examples Weak?

Looking at the quotes in the wikipedia article itself, where Clinton uses active voice to take responsibility, there is no sense that this reflects the "mistakes were made" perspective. Indeed, she acknowledges that she made mistakes and would not have made them if she would do it again. In the excerpt above, her later comments (admitting she made mistakes) make it unclear whether "mistakes were made" was used in the classical, obfuscating, manner, or simply to refer to a fact. Zenter (talk) 14:32, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Watergate

Did you want to discuss my contributions before removing them? ~~ Michael J Swassing 06:22, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

??????? I'm not sure what you mean, but you don't need to take such an antagonistic tone. As I said in my edit summary, that isn't the way categories are used. There are all sorts of things peripherally related to Watergate that don't go in the Watergate category; similarly, every president who has ever said "Mistakes were made" doesn't necessarily require notice in their category. And the actual phrase is not necessarily associated with American political scandals. As for bolding, it can make articles look like a middle-school text book; see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting). If you must, you can use italics to draw attention to the phrase, though I don't think it's necessary. SnowFire 18:31, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd think most people primarily associate this phrase with Watergate. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.131.243.239 (talk • contribs).

What's Watergate? //// Pacific PanDeist * 03:48, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Another common variant: A "mistake was made"

"A mistake was made by a junior staffer who is no longer with the campaign."

--Dole for President press secretary Christina Martin, on a letter Washington, D.C. resident Irv Rastin received thanking him for his contribution, which began, "Dear Cheetoh Breath," Time, July 29, 1996.

(From http://www.digitas.harvard.edu/~perspy/old/issues/1996/oct/scraps.html )

Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 20:51, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I guess that one is not particularly relevant because in this case, it is equivalent to saying, "A junior staff made a mistake..." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Obuibo Mbstpo (talk • contribs) 20:51, 6 March 2008 (UTC)