Andy and I were talking last night about how every minor gaffe that a political candidate makes is recorded and You-Tubed around the world minutes later. It's true—if any of us had to withstand the scrutiny of having every word we utter recorded and played back, it's unlikely any of us would pass muster.
Barack Obama is extremely well-spoken; it's hard to read a description of him that doesn't use the word "eloquent." I can't think of any instances in which he actually misspoke, but he does occasionally stammer when he's speaking off the cuff. Joe Biden, on the other hand, suffers from a serious case of foot-in-mouth disease, which has been well documented.
John McCain, too, manages to get it wrong quite a bit, as in this little clip:
We know what he means, but still.
And Sarah Palin? She speaks quite well—she was a TV sportscaster up there in Alaska at one point, right?—so her gaffes are not the verbal type but the cerebral type. She doesn't say the wrong words; she has the wrong information. Look what she tells some little third-grader about the veep's job:
It's no wonder she doesn't do interviews! What other key information is she dead wrong about? I shudder to think.
Did you hear McCain say "physical year" when I'm pretty darn sure he meant "fiscal year?"
And did you notice that at the last debate, McCain was dropping the "g" from his "ing" words? Guess he was taking a page from his running mate's book.
Posted by: Di | October 26, 2008 at 08:53 AM