The 1970 movie “Love Story” suggested that love meant “never having to say you’re sorry.”

There is obviously no love lost in politics, for today’s politicians are forever demanding or making apologies.

It’s the “in” thing. In writing, through an attorney, standing behind a podium with a cemetery backdrop, or with tear-stained faces, they say they are sorry. As though politics were a session with Oprah, lawmakers are embracing the apology as never before.

In recent TV campaign spots, Reps. Don Sherwood (R-Pa.) and Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.) offer what appear to be heartfelt apologies — Reynolds for his handling of the scandal surrounding former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), and Sherwood for an extramarital affair that ended with the mistress alleging that the congressman tried to strangle her.

Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic consultant working on Jack Davis’s campaign against Reynolds, does think much of public apologies. “Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t,” he said. “After 35 years of doing this, it depends on the level of anger by the electorate and whether the apology is believable. What’s happening now is most of these apologies are not believable because they are happening after the action and at a time when these people are figuring out they are at risk.”

Foley put his apology in writing and drove to Florida and an alcohol rehab program.

Through his attorney he expressed more sorrow and claimed that a priest molested him when he was a teenager.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) also recently issue a quasi-apology, saying, “I’m deeply sorry that this has happened. The buck stops here.”

Even Barbara Streisand got in on the apology act last week when, during a performance at Madison Square Garden, the lefty artiste made fun of President Bush and acquired a heckler. “Why don’t you shut the f--- up,” she told him. He left. Later, she apologized.  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have lost it,” she told the audience.

Darrell West, a political science professor at Brown University, isn’t surprised by the recent wave of apologies. “This is the Oprah era, a time of public confessions. It’s a way to inoculate yourself against public fallout.” If tears have to accompany the apology, he recommends them for men rather than women, but adds that the apology is best used infrequently if it is to be effective.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) said he has never publicly apologized for anything in politics and nor should anyone else. “If someone thinks they need to apologize they should do it on their way out the door,” he said in a phone conversation from Huntington Beach this week.

Rohrabacher said he believes instead in honest explanation. “The most important element of the relationship between the elected official and the public is that he is being honest with them and that doesn’t mean he has to disclose all of his warts,” he said.

When he thinks of ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham’s (R-Calif.) tear-soaked apology following his guilty plea on corruption charges, Rohrabacher feels pity and anger: “Duke had betrayed us and owed all of us and his constituents an apology. That wasn’t a fluke in his personality. I don’t even think his apology was adequate enough. I pity Duke.”

In 1998, then-president Bill Clinton looked squarely into TV cameras and declared of Monica Lewinsky, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

First Lady, now Sen. Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) went on the NBC “Today Show” and blamed a “vast right-wing conspiracy” for spreading lies.

But months later, on Sept. 11, 1998, the president apologized publicly, at the annual White House prayer breakfast, saying, “I don’t think there is a fancy way to say I have sinned … It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow I feel is genuine: first and most important, my family; also my friends, my staff, my Cabinet, Monica Lewinksy and her family, and the American people.”   

Michelle Combs, a spokeswoman for the Christian Coalition, said apologizing isn’t a magic bullet, but it’s a good way to start regaining voters’ trust. “Voters respect [it] when someone comes out and apologizes,” she said, “I think politicians, and I’m not going to name names, if they would have apologized right up front it would have saved them a lot of grief. The public is understanding, but they want to known the truth.

“As Christians, we are taught to forgive, just like Jesus forgives. But that doesn’t necessarily mean just because someone apologizes that you are going to vote for them.”

Combs said the worst thing anyone in Washington can do is “point the finger too soon. As Christians, you are supposed to forgive, but that’s just a step. You have to change your heart.”

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) is intimately acquainted with the public apology. In 2002 he drew outrage for implying that the country would have been better off had Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) been successful in his segregationist presidential campaign.

He made his comment on a Thursday and by Monday had issued a written apology: "A poor choice of words conveyed to some the impression that I embraced the discarded policies of the past. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I apologize to anyone who was offended by my statement."

In his autobiography “Herding Cats,” Lott now says he over-apologized.

That is, he’s sorry for being so sorry.