In a presidential campaign that has now stretched on for more than a year, in which candidates are making anywhere from three to five public appearances each day, some flubbed lines and twisted facts are likely to slip into their normal stump speeches.
That would explain Obama’s reference to campaigning in 57 states, or misstating the German concentration camp where his grandfather was part of the Allied liberating forces at the end of World War II, or even his declaration last week that “Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s.”
One could easily excuse Sen. John McCain for an occasional blown line.
But the number of recent gaffes uttered by McCain on the campaign trail could be more than simple slip-ups.
It’s occurred during his repeated inability to distinguish between Sunni and Shiites in Iraq, in misstating the history surrounding the troop surge in Iraq, in misidentifying the Czech Republic as Czechoslovakia (this coming some 15 years after Czechoslovakia split into two separate, independent nations), in referring to Vladimir Putin as the president of Germany, in his suggestions that Iraq and Pakistan share a common border (when, in fact, it is Afghanistan and Pakistan), when he misidentified Sudan as Somalia in discussing the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, and when he misstated a well-publicized antedote about his captivity as a POW in Vietnam.
We already have a president who habitually misstates the facts and mangles the English language.
Four more years of this? I don’t think so.
Tags: McCain Obama Campaign
