The Vote Ethics initiative is designed to focus on the ethical values most critical to public service: integrity, honesty, candor, courage, and the avoidance of conflicts and improper influence. Thus Virginia Senator George Allen's "macaca" incident poses a special challenge, not the least of which is that it is difficult to be certain what Allen's true intent was. He could, after all, be guilty of stunning stupidity without necessarily showing sufficient ethical deficiencies to warrant a "Vote Ethics" veto.

To recap the odd incident for readers who missed it: while speaking at a rally for his re-election, Allen pointed out a campaign worker for Democratic opponent James Webb who was videotaping an Allen rally in order to catch the Senator in some statement that could be exploited to Webb's advantage during the campaign. Referring to him as "Macaca, or whatever his name is," Allen appeared to mock the dark-skinned native-born American by saying, "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia!" Later, it was revealed that the mysterious word "macaca" means a macaque monkey in some languages, and has been used as a racial slur in Africa and elsewhere. Allen claimed that he had no idea what the word meant, and was just being, well, creative. Later his campaign claimed that "macaca" referred to the college student's haircut, which Allen thought was a Mohawk (it wasn't.) That bizarre explanation only threw kerosene on the fire.

Predictably, the press, talk shows and blogs have had a field day with this, and Allen, who was once regarded as a shoo-in for re-election, is sinking in the polls as a result. But what does the incident tell us about Allen's values and character? Was he really, as his opponents claim, intentionally ridiculing an Indian-American campaign worker for his Democratic rival on the basis of ethnicity in front of an all-white Allen rally? While the victim of his attack was videotaping the whole incident? If so, one would have to conclude that Allen doesn't recognize offensive racial stereotyping and harassment even when he's doing it.

His words, however, were ambiguous. "Macaca" meant nothing to most if not all of the crowd; it is at least conceivable that Allen picked an unfortunate fanciful name, as he claims. Similarly, his seemingly offensive "Welcome to America!" was not necessarily an inference that a dark-skinned campaign worker must necessarily be an alien, but could have been meant to evoke, however clumsily, the typical GOP mantra that conservatives and Republicans make up "the real America."

It must be said that the preponderance of the evidence does not favor Allen. His mother was brought up in French Tunisia, and the "macaca" slur originated in Northern Africa; this makes Allen's claim that he didn't know the meaning of his own word even less likely than it already was. In this light, Allen's claim that a word used as an ethnic slur just happened to jump into his mouth when he was referring to a dark-skinned citizen without any bad intent on his part is similar to Mel Gibson's statement that he has no idea why he made anti-Semitic statements. But Gibson, drunk as he was, definitely knew the meaning of his own vile words. Can we say with the same of Allen? We cannot; not with the same level of certainty.

We can conclude that on this occasion Allen was insensitive, disrespectful and a bully. That doesn't necessarily impugn his character; we all have bad days. The way we show that bad conduct was an aberration is by acknowledging that it was wrong and apologizing for it. Allen began with mild apologies of the "I'm sorry if I offended anyone" variety, and as his polls have continued to dive, recently graduated to abject apologies to anyone and everyone, including the Webb campaign, the targeted campaign worker, the media and presumably any macaques he could track down. The problem is, as pointed out in a Washington Post editorial, that Allen's campaign has continued to ridicule criticism of the incident even while Allen was apologizing for it:

… Even as he apologized, his campaign continued its two-faced strategy of simultaneously scoffing at the entire incident as what Dick Wadhams, Mr. Allen's campaign manager, has said is a contrivance. To Mr. Wadhams, politics means never having to say you're sorry.

Mr. Wadhams…told Republican leaders in a memo sent over the weekend that the Webb campaign and the media had ganged up "to create national news over something that did not warrant coverage in the first place."

He continued: "Never in modern times has a statewide office holder and candidate been so vilified." In other words, Mr. Allen is the victim -- not the 20-year-old student whom he mocked with an insulting, possibly racist slur in front of scores of chortling supporters and demeaned by saying, "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia!" 

This, as far as "Vote Ethics" is concerned, is the smoking gun regarding George Allen's integrity. To attempt to disown objectionable conduct through public apologies while simultaneously denying that the conduct was objectionable is dishonest, and shows a lack of candor, accountability, and trustworthiness. Whatever Senator Allen meant by "macaca," the public should be confident that when a U.S. Senator admits that he made a mistake and apologizes, he knows what that means.

Sadly, George Allen has shown that he does not.

[Disclosure: Jim Webb, Allen's opponent, was a law school classmate (Georgetown, Class of '75). I knew him and respect him, though we could not be called close friends. I haven't seen or spoken to him in over 25 years.]