The "past exonerative" tense

Grammatical tense

A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...

 is a witticism coined by William Schneider

William Schneider

William Schneider or Bill Schneider may refer to:*William Schneider , the attorney general of Maine*Bill Schneider , bassist, guitar tech, and tour crew manager*Bill Schneider , political commentator for CNN...

 of the New York Times to describe the rhetorical tactic of speaking in the passive voice

Passive voice

Passive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed. A sentence whose theme is marked as grammatical subject is...

 in order to distance oneself from blame. The tactic is most famous for being invoked by politicians.

The classic example of this usage was the 1986 utterance of "Clearly, mistakes were made..." by U.S. president Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

 to describe the actions of officials in his administration during the Iran-contra affair

Iran-Contra Affair

The Iran–Contra affair , also referred to as Irangate, Contragate or Iran-Contra-Gate, was a political scandal in the United States that came to light in November 1986. During the Reagan administration, senior Reagan administration officials and President Reagan secretly facilitated the sale of...

, who sold arms to Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

to fund rebels in Nicaragua.