Remember when Todd Akin apologized for “mispeaking”? And then expected everybody to forgive and forget? It seemed likely then that he didn’t get it when it comes to apologies, and now we have the proof. He seems to think, for instance, that President Obama has been apologizing, not just to the Libyans, but to  “all people, a lot of countries who are enemies.”

We know why Mitt Romney wants to ding the President when he has the decency to disavow a nasty, insulting movie, produced under highly questionable circumstances at the same time that he condemns the violence it spawned, and takes practical steps to bring the perpetrators to justice. Of course, expressing distaste for something does not constitute an apology, but in Romney’s case the effort to construe it as such probably has something to do with the desperation of a man who is grabbing at straws – like the weak and thoroughly discredited “apology tour” meme – in order to detract from his own lack of qualifications for the office he aspires to win.

But Akin is a different sort of creature. If he weren’t always trying to tell us that folks who disagree with his beliefs hate God, hate freedom, or hate America, I’d think that he was trying to get the upper hand  by demonstrating his Christian chops and turning the other cheek towards Romney, who was, don’t forget, quick to disavow the embarrassing Akin. But, alas for this theory,  Akin’s evidence for his belief that the President apologizes too much is of a piece with his proclivity to claim that liberals hate good things. He evidently thinks he reads the President’s brainwaves, which tell him that Obama is “just apologizing because he didn’t like America.”

Can we deduce from Akin’s comments that he apologized for his own ugly and ignorant comments because he doesn’t like himself? Same logic, if you think that the President is acting on behalf of the US. To be honest, it seems reasonable to me: I certainly don’t think Akin seems very likeable.

Of course, Akin is right that we did nothing wrong – which is why President Obama did not apologize. He did, however, condemn a rather virulent film that seems likely to have been a set-up meant to provoke a reaction in the Middle-East. Does Akin think that the Obama administration should embrace the film’s message? If he is simply concerned with free speech, the White House statement (as well as the statement from the embassy) affirmed that principle, while disavowing sympathy with the movie’s message, which affirmation was repeated most recently in Hillary Clinton’s statement:

… our country does have a long tradition of free expression, which is enshrined in our Constitution and in our law. We do not stop individual citizens from expressing their views no matter how distasteful they may be. […] There are of course different views around the world about the outer limits of free speech and free expression, but there should be no debate about the simple proposition that violence in response to speech is not acceptable.

I would welcome a serious clarification from Rep. Akin about just what he is trying to say. If you want to have a go at the meta-message, here you have it in Akin’s own words:

By now you’ve probably read about how Mitt Romney came out swinging at the President after the murder of staff at our Libyan embassy, hoping to land a punch and reinforce his laugable “apology tour” meme, no matter how harmful his comments might prove to be to American diplomats in the field. I’d thought that after Romney’s descent into welfare-queen, race-baiting he could go no lower. I was wrong. Michael Tomasky and Andrew Sullivan, representing the left and (the intelligent) right respectively, sum it up:

Some of you write, oh Tomasky can be dismissed because he just wants Obama to be reelected. That I do, for a host of reasons, but pretty high on my list is my belief, which I’ve held since 2007 and with redoubled passion since watching him more closely last year, that Mitt Romney is characterless and unprincipled and just can’t be the president. The last 16 hours have played out almost as if he sat down after dinner and said to Ann, “Now, how can I prove Mike Tomasky right?”

Andrew’s conclusion is mine:

These people are simply unfit for the responsibility of running the United States. The knee-jerk judgments, based on ideology not reality; the inability to back down when you have said something obviously wrong; and the attempt to argue that the president of the US actually sympathized with those who murdered his own ambassador in Benghazi: these are disqualifying instincts for someone hoping to be the president of the US. Disqualifying.

Sullivan’s post outlines the events and persuasively makes the case for the outrage about Romney’s behavior that is expressed above. I highly recommend it.

The whole thing made me so angry that I went to the Romney campaign Website and left a comment, telling the presidential hopeful how disgraceful I thought his behavior was. Probably a wasted gesture, but it made me feel lots better.

UPDATE: President Obama shows us how its done when you’re the real deal:

“There’s a broader lesson to be learned here: Governor Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later and as president one of the things I’ve learned is you can’t do that,” Obama told CBS News on Wednesday.”It’s important for you to make sure that the statements that you make are backed up by the facts and that you’ve thought through the ramifications before you make them.”