In the interests of equal time, we should glance over at the Republican nomination contest and see if there are any good apologies lately. Or bad apologies for that matter. Unfortunately, the best we can do at the moment is an apology demand.

The Republican candidates are, in general, an unapologetic bunch. Has Rudy Giuliani ever apologized for anything? He's three wives in. I doubt it. John McCain? Maybe. But this is a man who did not break under years of Viet Cong torture. He'll apologize only if he wants to. Fred Thompson will just laugh you off with some clever bit of folksy wisdom.
 
The Republican candidates do not give off an apology vibe. Meanwhile, Obama is palling around with Oprah.

That broadly fits the caricatures of both parties, doesn't it?

So it is not that I mean to neglect the Republican candidates—they just don't provide as much material.

Which brings us to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's demand that former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee apologize for — stay with me here — what he wrote in a recent article in Foreign Affairs.

Here is the apology demand:

At a campaign stop here on Monday, Mitt Romney continued his blunt criticism of his Republican rival Mike Huckabee, renewing a call for Mr. Huckabee to apologize for characterizing the Bush administration’s foreign policy as “arrogant.”

Mr. Romney once again accused Mr. Huckabee of using “the language of a Democrat” in an article he wrote for the January/February 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs in which he asserts that “the Bush administration’s arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad.”

During an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Mr. Romney said that Mr. Huckabee should apologize to President Bush for his comments ... (NY Times Politics blog)

And that is working out about as you might expect ...

“I don’t have anything to apologize for,” Mr. Huckabee said Sunday on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “I’ve got to show that I do have my own mind when it comes to how this country ought to lead, not only within its own borders but across the world.”

The money quote from Huckabee's piece is: "The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad." Which is about all you'll see quoted in the media. The full article is actually a pretty good discussion of what America's foreign policy should look like in the coming years. But no one cares about that!

So what's going on here? Can't President Bush stick up for himself if he feels wronged by Huckabee's commentary? Why does Romney feel the need to defend Bush's reputation? (Bush himself, I am sure, couldn't care less. At this point Huckabee's carping is the least of the President's worries.)

Political context time. Again courtesy of our friends at the New York Times:

Though polls show Mr. Romney leading in this early primary state [New Hampshire], Mr. Huckabee has recently leapfrogged ahead of him as the favorite of Republican voters in Iowa, which will hold its caucuses on Jan. 3, and has gained in popularity in other early states. Attempting to slow his opponent’s momentum, Mr. Romney has been increasingly critical of Mr. Huckabee and particularly of his record as governor of Arkansas, drawing distinctions with him on fiscal policy, immigration and his approach to commutations and pardons of prisoners.

Translation: Romney has spent millions of dollars on his campaign, only to see Huckabee come out of nowhere in recent weeks and threaten his position. Like Hillary Clinton over on the Democratic side, Romney is running scared and lashing out at his rival. And in the Republican primary, the worst thing you can call an opponent is ... a Democrat!

“The language he chose is the language you’re hearing from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards,” Mr. Romney said. “It’s not the language of someone who is a balanced observer, either from an independent or Republican’s perspective.”

Sounds pretty bad. Of course, it is complete malarkey.

If you read the piece in Foreign Affairs ... as I guarantee 99.999% of Americans will never do ... you see that while Huckabee is critical of the tone of American foreign policy under President Bush he is generally supportive of the President's aims. In Iraq, for example, he's not saying we should pull out now ... he says we should have gone in with more troops to start with! And that next time we invade someone, it should be done with overwhelming force. So unlike Obama (who wants to invite Castro and Ahmadabbadirkadirkajad over for milk and cookies at the White House) or Edwards (who thinks the War on Terror is a fairy tale) Huckabee is, if anything, criticizing Bush from the right.

But this is a presidential campaign ... facts have little bearing! Romney is using his apology demand to try and equate Huckabee with the Democrats. Will it work? We'll find out in a couple of week when the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire finally get around to telling those of us who live in the other 48 states who our choices for president are.

But for my money, Republican primary voters probably won't hold Huckabee's refusal to apologize against him: Being a Republican means never having to say you're sorry!