Time & Perspective Quote by William Scranton

A politician admitting he “still hasn’t gotten over” being wrong is more damning than it sounds, because Scranton isn’t confessing a private mistake; he’s exposing the machinery that manufactures public reassurance on deadline. The sentence starts in the voice of institutional calm: “this is what we know has happened,” a phrase engineered to project mastery while quietly lowering the bar to mere procedure. Then comes the pivot that breaks the spell: “Only to find out moments later” that the central assurance - “no significant off-site release” - was already obsolete.

Scranton’s intent isn’t self-pity. It’s a retrospective warning about how crisis communication pressures officials to speak before the facts are stable, and how that impulse can turn governance into performance. “Significant” does a lot of political work here: it’s the kind of elastic qualifier that lets authorities sound protective while preserving wiggle room if the situation worsens. When the qualifier collapses under new information, the real damage isn’t just credibility; it’s the public’s sense that the state is a reliable narrator.

The subtext is moral injury: he’s describing the moment he realized his role was less truth-teller than conduit, repeating what the system allowed him to say. Coming from a career politician, the lingering shock reads as an indictment of the informational fog around high-stakes events (think nuclear accidents and environmental disasters) where “off-site release” is bureaucratic language for something intensely physical: harm that doesn’t respect perimeter lines, press briefings, or political timelines.