By cops I don’t mean only cops, of course, although there will be some of these, along with FBI agents, prosecutors and other representatives of criminal-law enforcement. I mean to include in the generic term, as well, congressional investigators, departmental ethics officers, media scourges and deposition-taking, civil-suit lawyers who represent the aggravated, the oppressed and the merely litigious. The point is that owing to an infelicitous combination of (1) their own stupidity, ethically questionable and occasionally felonious behavior, and (2) an era in which opposition politicians and investigative journalists are increasingly on the prowl, the odds have risen greatly that these pols will end up in trouble. And what do they do then?

Certainly, the veteran political figures already in the soup in Washington don’t have anything useful to teach them, except perhaps by example of what not to say. Within the past couple of weeks both the president and the speaker have provided some negative guidance of this kind. For instance, next to “I am not a crook,” possibly the best-known, most derided and most suspect formulation from the past wrigglings of pinned-down public figures is “mistakes were made.” This usage, rendered famous by both Reagan and Bush in the Iran-contra mess, has been dubbed the “exonerative passive.” It is a kind of fugitive, last-resort concession of error that conspicuously fails to take responsibility for what one is responsible for. It was astonishing that Bill Clinton should have used it last week in relation to his White House fund-raising follies, but no more so, I suppose, than that Gingrich should have launched a vituperative speech in his own defense that only his worst enemies would have wished him to make.

The Gingrich diatribe illustrates any number of what-not-to-say-when-the-cops-come principles beyond the simple one Clinton violated (Don’t invite comparison to your predecessor’s scandals by parroting his most laughed-at defense). The speaker was garrulous, self-pitying and seemingly unable to stop blaming others for his own missteps. That’s three for three right there. Without doubt instructors in a course for Washington newcomers would tell them that when in trouble: First, don’t babble in a defensive, resentful mood, as it is all but certain you will say things you shouldn’t and do your case harm. Second, let others pity or feel sympathy for you if they will, but never (repeat, never) demonstrate that political-killer sentiment yourself; it is the worst. Third, take blame, don’t dish it, especially to those like staff and lawyers who were doing your bidding; people don’t like or want to follow generals who say it was the orderly’s fault. Both Gingrich and Clinton have managed to violate all three of these principles at once on occasion. Gingrich did it when he uttered that instantaneously boomeranging complaint about his seating on Air Force One; all that people wanted to hear from the leader of the Republicans was what he knew and felt as a result of his trip on the plane to Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral, not about how he felt personally slighted. Clinton did it when he incredibly likened himself as a victim to Richard Jewell; all people wanted to hear from the president about Jewell was how he, Clinton, as the man ultimately responsible for the FBI investigation, felt about Jewell’s dilemma, not his own, and what he intended to do about it.

Here are some more principles of behavior in these matters that are being violated every day. Avoid legalisms and technical cutenesses in what you say. After decades of TV cop shows, not to mention decades of televised hearings from Washington, everyone is on to them. All those “to the best of my recollections” set off alarms. So do the overfine distinctions and word games that the caught-out so often rely on to get out of a predicament.

Finally, there is the ancient wisdom of all cops-and-robbers jokes: Ignorance of the law is no excuse. I would shorten it: Ignorance is no excuse, or at least it is neither a very reassuring nor a very convincing one in a political leader who has been devoting uncounted hours of time to an enterprise he now professes to know almost nothing about. See Newt Gingrich on the financial organization of his civilization-teaching enterprise. See Bill Clinton and associates on their knowledge of who was sitting across the coffee table from them and why. Indeed, this latest innovation, the I-didn’t-know-where-I-was defense, will probably do less damage to those who invoke it if the public doesn’t believe them than if the public does. Fund-raising hanky-panky is one thing; a presumed world leader who doesn’t know where he is or whom he’s with is quite another.

I think there are only two basic right responses the newcomers should learn in what-to-say-when-the-cops-come school. One is: “I did it and it was wrong and I’m sorry and I will make amends” –and then shut up. The second is: “I did it and I would do it again and if you think it’s wrong you’ll have to demonstrate that–I am willing to take responsibility for this and go to the mat on it because I am right.” The worst is: “There is nothing wrong with it and I didn’t do it and, my gosh, well I guess I just remembered I did… sort of… but it wasn’t my fault… because my staff didn’t tell me… and I was very busy meditating on the issues and besides I thought I was in Cleveland.”

Whatever you do, the fledgling public figures should be told, don’t do that. And, oh, by the way, tell the truth.