Politicians talk a much better personal-responsibility game than they play. Though you wouldn’t know it from their rhetoric, loyalty and survival are much more important to them.

The latest example is the controversy surrounding Karl Rove, who is President Bush’s deputy chief of staff and the architect of successful Bush campaigns nationally and in Texas. Though all of the facts surrounding the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame aren’t known, it’s clear that Rove mentioned her in discussions with at least two journalists in an attempt to discredit her husband’s contentions that Iraq did not attempt to procure yellow-cake uranium from the African nation of Niger.

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the administration’s contention that Iraq may have reconstituted its nuclear program helped tip public opinion in favor of war. Bush invoked the uranium deal in his State of the Union address. Months later – and shortly after Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, wrote a column debunking the Niger claim – the administration acknowledged that it should not have included that claim.

To the supporters of Rove and the war, the overriding facts that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction and had not restarted its nuclear weapons program do not matter. They would rather distract the public with the little things Wilson got wrong and the circumstances surrounding his appointment to investigate the Niger claim. If his wife’s status is undermined, so be it. If operations she participated in are compromised, well, she shouldn’t have married a guy who is anti-Bush.

So instead of criticizing Rove for discussing sensitive information with reporters, they attack the messenger. This isn’t the first time this game has been played. When President Clinton was caught in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, his Democratic loyalists denounced him in soft tones and then went on the attack against his accusers.

An increasingly cynical public expects that this is how the game is played and largely sits it out. Politicians realize this, so they hunker down and wait out the storm. The victim of this tiresome cycle is the noble principle of personal responsibility.

Bush doesn’t take responsibility. Clinton didn’t. On the local level, Mayor Jim West has made vague apologies without explaining for what and, instead of taking responsibility, he’s gone on the offensive against his accusers.

How refreshing it would be if a politician stepped forward and said, “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have done it. I bear all responsibility, and I should be held accountable.”

The shock alone might ward off any recriminations.