BP CEO Tony Hayward no doubt intended his “I am deeply sorry” apology to resonate before the House Energy and Commerce Committee Thursday, but it quickly lost its steam with GOP Texas Rep. Joe Barton’s stunning apology to BP for a White House deal setting up an escrow fund to address the Gulf’s oil-spill damages and claims Barton called “a $20 billion shakedown.”

 Within hours Barton attempted to apologize again, this time to address his misguided prior apology to BP, but his attempt to redress his gaffe had already erased the GOP edge on the disaster, reversing the Replicant’s holier-than-oil stance of calling the Obama administration’s competence into question. Now Barton is apologizing for the apology that was an apology for the apology, become a sideshow that has even sidelined the BP chairman’s “small people” language slip.

 This year has seen an incredible number of apologies, non-apologies and bluff-outs that somebody somewhere should have apologized for if only they know who to apologize to and when being caught red-handed should prompt a little honesty in the redressing. When Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons tried to hide his mistress on the trip, the plane and the car by telling the reporter covering and taping the affair, “You’re full of sh—.” Gibbon apologized later but it probably cost him his reelection bid.

 California’s GOP Senate nominee Carly Fiorina, who was fired by Hewlett Packard for her performance, or more apparently her lack of either it or competence, was caught on an open microphone dissing Senator Barbara Boxer’s hair. Fiorina is running against Boxer and later apologized (dare we say it?) after a fashion. Her apology attempted to shift blame and attribution.

 Nevada GOP Senate primary candidate Sue Lowden tempered her ‘”chicken-for-checkup” comments but the voters were not in the mood for chicken tempura. She was originally the front runner in a race that she lost. Other losers who offered explanations for gaffes that failed were J.D. Hayworth, who disputed that the U.S. declared war on Germany (WWII) and Vaughn Ward of Idaho who dissed Puerto Rico without apparently knowing it’s a U.S. territory not a separate country.

 All of this is wonderful source material for epigrams and Political PunDitty barbs, and many of these seem to write themselves. Like this one:

 Talking always gives one the chance
 To celebrate their ignorance.

  Sadly, political gaffes often reflect a more deep-seated problem. A slip of the tongue sometimes reveals an absence not of thought, but of knowledge.

 It would be nice if ignorance
Inspired public indifference
Instead of heated arguments
Proving naught but incompetence.