I rarely watch Politically Incorrect because I think Bill Maher has a fetish for blond, nauseating, right-wing pundettes. But the night after the mid-term elections I did tune in, and I saw one of those rare blindingly-clear moments of honesty in politics.

The nauseating right-wing pundette for the evening, Charmaine Yoest, was a brunette, and she had her talking points memorized well. But when she tried to correct the host's statement that the Republicans had lost the election, Maher made a statement I'll never forget. Or rather one I'll never remember because it was so long, but I'll always remember the substance. He literally shouted "You lost!", asked what color the sky was on her planet, and asked what it would take for her to see the plain truth: they lost, period. No spin required. Bite the bullet and be honest with us for once.

This sentiment crystallizing the frustration to which we, the ones who care what happens in our democracy, are eternally damned. We want the political class to stop insulting our intelligence, to be sure, but the real frustration is that nobody ever says, "I was wrong." We want confessions. Some want the whole sobbing humiliation (a la Jimmy Swaggart), but I'd settle for a bit of honest, good natured self-deprecation.

We want politics to be like Matlock.

The guilty party squirms a little in the cold, polished wood of the witness chair, beads of sweat forming and commingling on brow and upper lip. Eyes turned up to the ceiling -- maybe higher -- the attorney for the wrongfully-accused defendant ambles across the expansive courtroom to the evidence table, tracing the back of a withered finger across the cold, polished wood in front of exhibits labeled with small lettered placards. Finally he points to an exhibit and turns to the witness in one smooth motion. He fills his lungs and confidently drawls out the accusation. "Doesn't THIS prove that YOU, in fact, are the guilty one, not the defendant?!" All eyes turn to the witness, who starts stammering excuses, then blurting out a tearful confession. Gavel. The prosecution withdraws. Case dismissed. The witness is arrested and presumably sent off to the pokey.

Except in Washington.

In politics, when you're caught dead to rights, that's only the starter's pistol. Take this sample of cases:

• Newt Gingrich is caught on tape defying the terms of the House Ethics Committee's perjury conviction. Dead to rights.
• Barbara Bush clone Henry Hyde sits on the board of directors for a less-than-prudent savings and loan which goes belly-up. A court order requires the board members to reimburse us taxpayers for some of the bailout. He refuses to pony up, stiffing fellow board members with his share of the bill. Dead to rights.
• The GOP goes down in flames in recent elections, losing at every level of government. Pundits and pols alike are caught on tape predicting Republican gains on every level (including Newt's ridiculous prediction that very night). Dead to rights.
• Ken Starr's goon squad tries to coerce Monica Lewinsky into secretly recording conversations between herself and others, including the Big Fella himself. Ken says, under oath and unequivocally, that it never happened. But it's in Monica's testimony, her mother's, and (oops) the FBI filing of the goons themselves. Dead to rights.

Where was Newt's confession for conspiring to counter-attack his own Ethics Committee puppets, which he was legally bound not to do? Nowhere. He made sure the illegally-recorded tapes were not accepted as evidence to extend the inquiry (irony abounds), and got away with an apology and congratulations FROM the committee's chairwoman.

Hyde's confession isn't on the wind, either. Nor is his punishment, unless you count having to head up the loopy impeachment inquiry.

Pundits/ettes? A few have said "we blew it" (emphasis on the "we" -- offering to share the shame with their colleagues), but none has accepted personal responsibility.

And of course the GOP is reciting, verbatim, all the lines the Democrats used to explain away their crushing losses in 1994:

"It was the low voter turnout."
"It was demagoguery from the other side."
"Special interest groups lied to the voters."
"When you look at all the numbers, more people voted for our candidates than their candidates."

And now we're down to Ken. Perhaps Rep. Maxine Waters will follow through on her threat to indict him for multiple counts of perjury. (Interesting side note: Starr and Loony Tunes Congressweasel Bob Barr agreed it was impossible to set "a perjury trap." The GOPsters on the McLaughlin Group used that exact term for what the Democrats did to Starr. Dead to rights.) So what if we get a conviction in US v. Starr? Don't expect a confession.

Of course, there is someone who has taken personal responsibility in U. S. politics. A lot. The phrases "I was wrong," "I'm sorry," and "I accept full responsibility" have crossed his lips multiple times, in public, even on television. No Reaganesque half-confessions, like "Mistakes were made." No Gingrichian caveats, like "To the extent that I was too [insert self-serving misleading description], I apologize." Just the real deal, straight apologies when he's wrong and straight challenges to his accusers when he's right. It's taken a while to get there, but he's clearly learned the lesson we were never able to teach the two previous occupants of his chair (three if you count Monica).

Can it be that the President is demonstrating... leadership? Could the oft- repeated GOP accusation that he tells the people what we want to hear be... a good thing? Well, if these radical theories turn out to be true, don't expect anyone from the other side to admit that blue is blue and true is true. There's bound to be a way they can squint at him and imagine they're seeing a dirt-stupid plowboy from the sticks as opposed to the Rhodes Scholar and twice-elected leader of the free world.

But on a positive note, you may have seen GOP lapdog trainer Ralph Reed's epistle this weekend. He confessed that the GOP was wasting their time looking in the rear view mirror at the visage of the genial-but-dirt-stupid congenital liar Ronald Reagan. (I'm not absolutely sure he used all those words, but I remember the "rear view" and "Reagan" part.) 18 years ago, while Ralph was still a tow-headed nipper correcting his Sunday School teacher somewhere, an almost-forgotten Reagan strategist named Lee Atwater set out the only coherent Republican agenda in the last 40 years -- since the McCarthy Era. Reagan read it from cue cards, and they had a big hit. But, unfortunately for each of us in varying degrees, all the viable and/or sensible parts of the agenda passed into law.

One result (absentmindedly missed by Reed) was the quadrupling of the national debt and annual $200 billion interest payment that comes out of We the People's pockets to this day.

The other consequence of the deification of Reagan and The Words of his Holy Cue Cards was that anything he said was taken up as a blessed duty of any "real" Republican. So they're duty-bound to support the crumbs of that agenda that didn't pass the smell test: Star Wars contracts for GOP donors in the aerospace industry, a constitutional amendment banning the clear and omnipresent danger of flag burning, another to ban abortion, and a few others. This weekend, Ralph tugged his puppies' amply-funded choke collars and commanded them to stop harkening back to the days of Reagan and come up with a new, clearly identifiable agenda.

By the way (back to the subject of confession), Atwater confessed at the end of his life that he was wrong in many cases, including maliciously hurting people in the political arena. Maybe we have to wait until Newt, Henry, Ken, et. al, hit their respective deathbeds to get those overdue confessions.

I tell you, this wouldn't happen under Attorney General Matlock.

--Dave Gibbons