I Don’t Recall

Is there any better defense in the whole world than, “I don’t recall or remember”? I recently spoke to an attorney friend of mine and he said the key to political survival is “plausible deniability”.

In laymen’s terms that simply means that your, “I don’t remember that conversation or briefing “can be convincing in the absence of proof to the contrary. It appears that every politician or business executive worth his weight in salt has learned this valuable lesson. By saying, “I don’t remember” technically you are not committing perjury or lying because who can say if you remember or not? Everyone knows we all have different levels of concentration and recall. There is the level when a co-worker is painfully describing his exciting vacation to the Maple Leaf Festival in Des Moines, there is the level when your wife is describing how she dented the car, and there is the level when the doctor tells you, you have cancer.

It amazes me how these men who have built illustrious careers based on their levels of concentration can at a moment’s notice all of a sudden not remember some of the most crucial information used to make major decisions. How have these men risen to these top echelons of power and yet be so incompetent? Or is it incompetence? Maybe these guys are using the “crazy like a fox” defense.

I have a theory as to how these guys are able to pull off this seemingly uncharacteristic lost of reason. Those posing the questions do not seem to viscously attack the absurdity of this notion for fear that someday they will need this “selective amnesia” escape clause. We cannot expect the wolves to guard the hen house. We the people must let it be known once and for all that we will no longer accept this answer as plausible or acceptable. We cannot guarantee who remembers what, but what we can do is get rid of them anyway for being so incompetent. It seems like every week there is a parade of politicians or executives having memory loss. No more; if you cannot remember then you need to be retired or fired. There are plenty of people in this country who still have some degree of recall left. As long as we passively allow these charlatans to continue to hide behind this cowardice we will never get to the truth about anything.

Granted there are some things I have forgotten; but I remember every person I ever fired and why. I remember every lame brained scheme I ever tried that failed and it cost me money, not billions but hundreds. I remember every time I cheated on my wives. The point is that there are certain things no matter how hard I try to forget I can’t and there are some things no matter how hard I try to remember I can’t. However, there are also some things I remember that I would rather forget for fear of exposure to the public eye. This is not amnesia, it is cowardice. One is excusable, the other is not. If you were man enough to conceive of these things, be man enough to own them. Why is it that success is the child of many fathers and failure is the bastard child? What irks me the most about these guys is not that they are ashamed for what they have done or proposed, but the fact that they got caught doing it. I guess there is no honor among thieves?