John Kerry was against an apology before he was for it. Apparently, the big guns of the Democratic Party mobilized and convinced him that he was appearing to the public to be an ass, and becoming such a distraction that he might even cause the election of 2006 to turn out just like his botched run at the presidency in 2004. But his apology nonetheless ends the issue, even as one suspects that his first instinct to not apologize was the more genuine, and that only pressure from the Democratic party leadership is the real reason that he issued his apology.