A number of people have commented on the ways in which current Republican candidates for president differ from President Ronald Reagan, generally taking positions that are more conservative than he held. One example of that came as I recently read yet another denunciation of President Barack Obama by a Republican candidate who claimed the president was a serial apologizer for America. Some variant of “No president should ever apologize for America” has become a fairly constant theme in the Republican primary.

As I read it, I was reminded of the time President Reagan and I teamed — with a number of other people — to do precisely what these candidates are denouncing: apologize on behalf of America, not for an accident, but for a conscious, deliberate national policy choice.

There are a number of cases of presidents apologizing for accidents — the mistaken shooting-down of an airliner, a crash at sea, etc. But I assume that the Republican critics of Obama are denying that neither they nor any properly patriotic American president would ever apologize for something done as a matter of official policy.