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Will This Comment Cost Barack Obama The Presidency?

May 9th, 2008
By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief


Will Rush, Sean, O’Reilly, weblogs and Sunday morning news show talking heads turn this into the new issue that will dominate 524 1/2 news cycles?

Will Obama have to make a clarification speech about it?

Will it turn up in Republican campaign ads this fall?

I would say….you can count on it (war planning, war policy, the economy, gas prices, health care can all wait a while..).

Details here.

And discussion HERE.

I mean, this IS the kind of issue people like to talk and rant about, right?



This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 8:17 pm and is filed under Media, Barack Obama, News, MSM, Journalism, Democrats, Internet News Media, 2008 Elections, Talk Radio, Media Criticism, Cable Talk Shows, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 25 Comments

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    Ya know, I almost fell out my chair laughing. In a college course I had, I actually said said I would like to visit the "58 states" in a presentation. The professor look at me strangely and looked back. And he just shook his head and I continued. About a minute later it hit me, I said :58 states" instead of 48. I just kept on going.

    So I understand Senator Obama. But Joe, you realize that the right wing sites are the ones making the ruckus as kind of poetic justice for Obama apparently making a senior crack at McCain. If it makes everyone feel good, onward!
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    He's obviously counting the five states that Texas has the right to divide itself into...
    http://www.snopes.com/history/american/texas.asp

    Plus North and South Florida...
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ar...

    Plus the State of Franklin...
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_franklin

    Plus the State of Jefferson...
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Jefferson

    ...which makes 57. Maybe Puerto Rico's 58?
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    The timing of Barack's booboo couldn't have been worse [or better depending on your point of view] after his double entendre of McCain's "losing his bearings" implying Johnny Mac's senior status and then stepping in doodoo in public about the number of states.

    What the Rush, O'Reilly, Hannity legions will make hay on is that had McCain made the same gaffe, it would be front page above the fold & the lead cable news across the MSM universe.

    The MSM & NYT & its pilot fish are all in the tank for Obama, and the non-response of the talking heads will again show a skeptical electorate that maybe Obamania is a bill of goods that's been oversold.
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    T-Steel said: "kind of poetic justice for Obama apparently making a senior crack at McCain"

    I agree. This is sorta like Blogger Karma, where whenever someone comments on the spelling or punctuation problems of a blog post or comment . . . ALWAYS the critic's comment will have spelling/punctuation problems too.

    Daveinboca is right in noting that, had McCain misspoken in this way, there would be Hell to pay . . . grave discussions above the fold in the NYT and Post . . . neurologists consulted . . . the Left Blogosphere would have exploded in glee . . . .

    During the recent Petraeus hearing, McCain misspoke . . . immediately corrected himself . . . and was widely criticized for his misspeaking. Later in the day, in questioning Ambassador Crocker, Obama misspoke confusing Iraq with Iran....but did not correct himself. Crocker answered the question as intended, but not spoken. There was almost no comment anywhere about this.

    Obama and McCain just get tired...especially doing the same stump speeches and lines over and over and over. There is a double standard in the reporting of it though.

    Ya can't mess with karma. The GOP are pleased, I imagine, that Obama's "senior moment" was caught on video.
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    During the recent Petraeus hearing, McCain misspoke . . . immediately corrected himself


    I just hope he picks Lieberman as his VP so that at no point in the next hundred years he starts talking about Iran supporting Sunni insurgents.

    Or at least he doesn't finish the sentence without "correcting himself". Whatever that really means.
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    Well, clearly the implication here is that right wingnut sites will jump on this misstatement as though it really means something other than fatigue- with bloggers indicating that they think that Obama actually doesn't know how many states there are.

    But of course when I go to memeorandum and click on some of the conservative blogs that are discussing it, it's pretty much a consensus that this was a mistake born out of fatigue and the only partisan sniping is that people feel that if McCain had said the same thing then there would be much hay made over it by the left as a sign of dementia or at least a sign that he is too old to handle the rigors of the campaign trail or the office.

    So perhaps we should stop putting words in people's mouths? It's annoying, and destructive, I think, to our political discourse for people to react to every gaffe or statement made on the stump by hypothesizing about how the opponents are going to react to it (and of course, whether they do or not, the people who identify politically with the candidate who made the gaffe go away assuming that that really was the reaction when that's not even the case.)
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    BTW, I puzzled for a moment over how he made that particular slip since 57 seems a strange number to accidentally say. Then I realized that the math works if he thought he'd said that they'd been to 47 states, with one more to go, since they're not planning to go to Alaska and Hawaii. And since the number 50 almost slips out when you're talking about the states, he probably had a brain glitch that made him put the "50" with the "47" number that he meant to say, and it came out as "57" without him even realizing what he'd said.
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    BTW, I have no doubt that Obama knows that there are 50 states but I'm more curious to hear what he meant in his statement about FDR and Truman talking to our enemies, as Ed Morrisey discusses here:
    http://hotair.com/archives/2008/05/07/video-roo...
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    A pox on all your houses.

    I just checked out the righteous right-wing blogs 'not' (haha) making this an issue.
    The theme: see how fair we are, when the blogs have been so unfair to McCain.

    When even being fair is spun to denigrate someone else,, there is no quarter left for rational discussions.
    Cleverness beats intelligence.
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    Runasim, the reason I disagree with you on whether "fairness" should be open to discussion is that quite obviously it wouldn't be fair to use racially based criticism toward Obama, and the same should be extended to McCain in regard to "ageism". This goes to that because liberal blogs certainly have made much over McCain's misstatements and have used them to imply that his age is a legitimate problem; yet they should acknowledge that slips of the tongue come from all candidates and are not proof of senility or insufficient rigor.

    If people play fair then no one will try to appeal to the refs.
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    CStanley,

    What destroys any attempt to discuss any topic at all is the inevitable drawing in of history all the way back to, seemingly, the Garden of Eden.

    I think there is a legitimate discussion to be had about whether or not McCain's age is a factor.. It certainly makes me consider his choice of VP more seriously than I would otherwise, or, maybe that's a good thing, because I should take the VP more seriously in all cases.
    In any case, it was definitely overblown and was used as an excuse to crticize, not discuss. .

    There is a good way to discuss it , and, increasintly on all topics, there's a bad way. .
    When it becomes a competittion about the number of related bad behavior in blogs that can be found on the Right/Left axis, it absolutely destorys the original topic, It becomes a game of revenge or scoring political points, no longer a discussion at all.

    I'm not saying that comparisons can't be made. I'm just personally dsigusted when making comparisons is just the next salvo in political campaigning.
    I hate to think how the Left will retaliate now, the next time someone from the GOP makes a verbal gaffe. "Look at us, we're so saintly, we won't criiticize"?

    II think tThe Onion may be my last refuge for political commentary.
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    I agree, runasim, and I just thought your other comment went a bit too far so as to not leave room for the legitimate discussions. I've always hated the type of blog commentary where one 'side' talks incessantly about how bad the other 'side' is. I find Michelle Malkin almost unreadable for that reason, for example, even though I find a good bit of agreement on issues with her (not complete though- on her one pet issue of immigration I don't agree at all.)

    And I just have to say that this particular post from Joe is of that type, even though I don't think he's guilty of doing it as frequently as many other bloggers do.
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    Well, clearly the implication here is that right wingnut sites will jump on this misstatement as though it really means something other than fatigue- [...]
    But of course when I go to memeorandum and click on some of the conservative blogs that are discussing it, it's pretty much a consensus that this was a mistake born out of fatigue and the only partisan sniping is that people feel that if McCain had said the same thing then there would be much hay made over it by the left as a sign of dementia or at least a sign that he is too old to handle the rigors of the campaign trail or the office.

    Well, so far I haven't seen much of that acknowledgment of fatigue on the right. I think it was Marc Ambinder who first blogged about the gaffe, and HE said it was fatigue and nothing more before going on to the "If McCain said this..." joke line. I haven't gone through all the response yet, but so far from what I've seen, Joe here is the ONLY blogger to stress how insanely absurd it is that this is even considered a hot news item. And thank you for that, Joe.

    The problem with the comparison to McCain is that McCain makes such gaffes *all the time.* He has repeatedly said things like Purim is the Jewish Halloween (Halloween is actually not participated in by observant Jews at all; it's considered a pagan holiday), and that Iran is training Al Qaeda (he said that several times, I believe, even after Joe Lieberman corrected him). He told CNN last year that David Petraeus rides around some neighborhoods in Baghdad in an unarmed humvee, and that any other American could stroll through some Baghdad neighborhoods unarmed as well. I could go on and on and on. McCain's ignorant, stupid, uninformed public comments are *notorious.* And they are not the result of fatigue. I personally do not agree with the age or dementia explanation either. I just think McCain is an unstable, uninformed hothead.

    At any rate, when Barack Obama makes stupid mistakes of fact almost every day, and they are substantive, and he makes them even after being corrected repeatedly, and they are not obvious misspeakings caused by extreme fatigue, *then* maybe you and others can justifiably draw analogies to John McCain.
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    I agree with kathedits. When we evaluate statements made be presidential candidates it is important to consider whether the candidate makes just plain stupid statements, truly ignorant statements, statements made for purely political reasons. or (mis)statements because one is tired.

    I sure do not want a president who makes statements (as McCain does all the time on Iraq and Iran) for political purposes... we've all seen what happens when Bush does it.

    I don't want a president who makes incorrect statements (and will be basing important information on this knowledge- or lack of knowledge).

    But I also don't want a president who can't think right when tired or under pressure. Given that we all aren't at our sharpest when we're tired or under pressure, we won't find a candidate who doesn't make mistakes from time to time. I think we need to see how the candidates handle the situation. Do they acknowledge their mental state or do they go ahead and make a rash decision? Do they make gaffes all the time or only on occasion?

    So until Obama makes a habit of making gaffes or spouting lies to us for political gain I don't have too many concerns with him about this.

    Until McCain stops lying to the public about the rosy situation in Iraq and stops making continual gaffes, I will have a concern about his ability to lead this country as president.
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    CStanley,
    This is just to acknowledge your calm m reply.

    For the sake of my sanity, I'm leaving this topic. The storm is gathering speed again.
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    The problem with all of that, Stockboy and kathedits, is who gets to judge what's a gaffe and what's not. For instance, no one has responded to my link to Ed Morrissey's commentary about Obama's statement about the diplomacy of FDR and Truman. Unless someone can better explain what he meant by that, I'd consider it a gaffe or a misstatement about historical fact. But since a conservative blogger is the only one who is pointing it out, Obama supporters seem to feel they can ignore it.

    But the main point is, how can you make a comparison between who messes up more if there is no objective way to evaluate that? It's like an athletic competition with no goalposts, and the fans of each team get to put points on the board according to how they feel their own team is performing.
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    LOL, thanks, runasim.
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    For instance, no one has responded to my link to Ed Morrissey's commentary about Obama's statement about the diplomacy of FDR and Truman.

    It's not even possible these days to agree on what diplomacy IS, much less whether FDR and Truman used it or not, and when.

    I would have to do some research to be able to write in an informed way about FDR's and Truman's diplomatic efforts or lack of them. And that, Christine, is the point. U.S. diplomacy during the presidencies of FDR and Truman are matters for discussion and argument. They are not matters of plain and unarguable fact. I don't have to do any research to know that the number of states in the United States is 50, not 57. Therefore, if a candidate for president says he's visited 57 states, it's safe to assume it's a simple, uncomplicated gaffe. And if, additionally, said presidential candidate very rarely, if ever, makes such gaffes (as opposed to impolitic remarks or statements about history or current affairs that are open to debate), then the logical, common sense conclusion is that he is very, very sleep-deprived and simply misspoke, since it is not within the realm of possibility that Barack Obama (or *even* John McCain) does not know the actual number of states in the United States.

    Again, when you try to analogize "57 states" to "FDR's and Truman's diplomatic efforts," you are talking apples and potatoes. They're not even in the same food group.
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    I have some partial agreement with what you're saying, and some disagreement. You're right that the FDR diplomacy bit is more complex and relies on people to review their history a bit to know whether or not Obama's statement was a misstatement of fact, but I disagree that it's as subjective as you say it is. There would have to be some factual basis for saying that the policies of those presidents are based on the same principles as Obama advocates in current situations, which was his basic claim. So I'm just trying to point out that although this is more complex than a possible slip of the tongue, that actually means it's even more important to address it because it involves the candidate's understanding of history as it relates to his formation of policy.

    IOW, I'm not really disagreeing that these two things are apples and potatoes, I'm saying that we should be looking at the potatoes more closely than the apples but it's too tempting for people to focus on the apples which are easier targets.
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    The phrase "losing his bearings" does not have any implications about age.

    Is this the worst you McCain apologists have to cry about these days? McCain can go around talking about how Obama is Hamas's favorite candidate but Obama can't say that McCain's lost his bearings...

    Good stuff.
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    Yeah, the claim that "losing his bearings" was an ageist crack is laughable. Even Ben Smith over at Politico didn't fall for it.
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