Our personal favorite? Number 5.
On alternative energy, Mitt Romney just endorsed Hitler’s method of liquifying coal. Not a joke.
“Liquified coal. Gosh, Hitler during the second World War…”
Things no politician should ever say: Oh, that Hitler, he had such great ideas!
I’ll go ahead and say it – I think that I was not aware when I gave that speech that Jack Ryan was going to be sitting right there.President Obama • Admitting to Bob Woodward that he regrets the incident in which he tore apart Paul Ryan’s budget plans right in front of him. He regrets it so much that he got Paul Ryan’s name right in his interview with Woodward. Maybe Obama just read “Patriot Games” again or something?
Here’s the final entry in our weekly summer post series, “The Pitch.” (We’ll bring this back at some point, we promise!) This post, written and research by Matthew Keys, examines what we’re calling the ten most-prominent political gaffes of the last decade or so. Follow Matthew on Twitter here.
From zero to infamy in 30 seconds: Before last week, Missouri Senate candidate and current Rep. Todd Akin didn’t have a national profile. He looked like he might take down Claire McCaskill thanks in part to changing demographics in the state. But thanks to a half-minute comment on the nature of abortion, Akin is down as much as ten points in a recent poll. He felt the wrath of the gaffe. And he’s not alone. Gaffes have taken on a life of their own in modern political coverage. So with that in mind, SFB contributor Matthew Keys (who you might know from his epic Twitter account) has thrown together a list of the worst gaffes of the past ten years. Which is the worst? Find out after the jump.
Perhaps he doesn’t plan to drop out? The Missouri Senate candidate, who was rumored to be dropping out as of yesterday afternoon, appears to be at least trying to salvage his campaign right now, releasing this ad. Akin didn’t have the best day on Monday, facing sharp rebukes from his own party and skipping out on “Piers Morgan Tonight” at the very last second. Akin drew stern criticism over the weekend after he claimed that women couldn’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape” — a claim that suddenly gives Claire McCaskill a chance to win re-election.
Amazing gaffe by Romney: “Join me in welcoming the next president of the United States: Paul Ryan!” Not vice president. President.
“Well, we’ve had our brief moment of celebration, because the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare is, in fact, unconstitutional. It’s what many of us argued all along,” Mourdock begins. “But don’t sit back and think the fight is over because it isn’t. Barack Obama and Congressman Joe Donnelly are already putting Obamacare 2.0 together and they’re going to try and pass it once again. We cannot let that happen.”
He continues: “The answer to America’s health care issues is not going to be big government to any reasonable solution. The answer is not going to come from having individuals lose their personal choice, lose their individual freedom. I’m Richard Mourdock and I’m running for the U.S. Senate to make sure that something like Obamacare does not happen again. If you’d like to help us wage that fight to make sure that Obamacare stays repealed, then please go to tour website, RichardMourdock.com, and contribute generously.”
This of course is awesome and hilarious because the Supreme Court has yet to rule on “Obamacare,” and are likely to do so next week. Well, at least we know what ol’ Rich is likely gonna say ahead of time.
I’ve been meaning to write a piece about this. We were talking earlier about the daily gaffes and Twitter and the news cycle, and I’m totally as much to blame for helping that atmosphere as anyone. We all engage in tweeting and commenting and hammering these guys when they say something off message. It’s created a crisis for political journalism. People genuinely do not think it is in their interest — both White House and campaign officials, both campaigns, it’s not a partisan thing at all, it’s Democrats and Republicans — they genuinely do not believe it’s in their interest to talk in an unguarded way. Because even if they trust you to get the context 100 percent right, it doesn’t matter, because they know that a liberal or conservative blog, or a campaign ad, will just grab something out of context and run with it and create some damaging meme.
I’ve been doing this for 15 years, and it’s worse now than it’s ever been. If you think about it from their perspective for a second, you can’t totally blame them. Lately I’ve realized it’s harder than it’s ever been, and these campaigns want to exercise complete and total message discipline. In the current media environment, that’s the whole game. There’s pretty serious tension between running a campaign and running a transparent and open White House. We often complain about this, and rightfully so, but we have to recognize some of the blame here.
What are the odds the Etch A Sketch gaffe would’ve become a thing had Twitter not existed?
» Was Obama’s point valid? It sounded like a pretty good gaffe to some, but Slate’s Dave Weigel thinks that the nuances of the point might’ve been lost on folks looking for a soundbite. As Weigel notes, the public sector at the state level has lost 600,000 jobs under Obama — which, by the way, the GOP is OK with, because they want to see the government shrink anyway. And as public sector and private sector unemployment are counted in the unemployment rate, it’s ultimately part of the reason the unemployment rate has stayed high. “It’s easier to pretend that the president doesn’t care about the private sector, and unemployment,” Weigel notes, “and hope that the media runs with the zinger instead of explaining some pretty rudimentary macroeconomics.”
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So, sales of Etch A Sketches are way up over the past couple of days. Wonder why.
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