The White House's frequent minor errors presage major problems.
There actually was a time when an “e” ended a political career. Or, at least, the misuse of an “e” did. I refer to that fateful day in 1992 when Vice President Dan Quayle told a 12-year-old schoolboy that “potato” was spelled with an “e” at its end. While the reality is that a flash card Quayle had been given bore the misspelling, the mistake was seized upon by the media and used to cement the eye-candy-and-air image of the boyishly good-looking vice president. It was a silly way to measure a man, but image is everything in politics.
So now it’s time for the gander’s sauce. If it was justifiable to write off Quayle as a dolt for stumbling over the spud, how should we react to frequent misspellings in press releases issued by the White House? Michael O’Brien at The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room reports on this story, writing, “Misspellings continued to plague the Obama administration on Thursday [9/9], after two more releases containing errors were sent to reporters in the last 24 hours.”…
Article comments
76 - roger nowosielski
I don't believe in labels, Pablo. What are you saying?
77 - handyguy
Exactly. Perhaps Clav intended that to be funny. Brooks is to the left of Rush Limbaugh, but he is always introduced on TV as a 'conservative commentator.'
He is uncomfortable with the Glenn Becks and Sarah Palins of the world [as are many/most people with brains], but no liberal.
78 - roger nowosielski
Clav has been funny of late, and I don't mean it as criticism. But the point isn't ultimately about Clavos; it is about what Brooks had said.
79 - handyguy
Of course, Clavos leaves off the first two paragraphs of Brooks's article -- the set up:
It was interesting to watch the Republican Party lose touch with America. You had a party led by conservative Southerners who neither understood nor sympathized with moderates or representatives from swing districts.
They brought in pollsters to their party conferences to persuade their members that the country was fervently behind them. They were supported by their interest groups and cheered on by their activists and the partisan press. They spent federal money in an effort to buy support but ended up disgusting the country instead.
80 - Clavos
handy, that's why I put a link to the article in my comment.
It was never my intent to simply copy-and-paste the entire article into the thread.
And of course I cherry-picked. I have never, ever claimed to be non-partisan, nor will I ever be, either in my comments or in my articles labeled as "opinion."
Anyone on these threads who claims to be is either self-deluded or a liar.
Oh, and BTW, those first two 'graphs are why I called him a liberal pundit; he's certainly well to the left of my POV.
81 - handyguy
Brooks is a member of that vanishing species, the moderate northeastern Republican. He and the two ladies from Maine are about it now.
82 - Clavos
Never thought I would say this, but Hugo Chávez is occasionally right. He's quoted in an article in the Latin American Herald Tribune as saying:
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama was at best an "ignoramus" for saying the socialist leader exported terrorism and obstructed progress in Latin America.
83 - handyguy
You disagree with Obama's characterization of Chavez, or you just get a nice, high-minded chuckle out of calling the prez an ignoramus? Lovely.
84 - roger nowosielski
There's a higher road, Clavos, above the madding crowd: what's good for the country. And that kind of patriotism is a quickly disappearing breed. The solutions don't fall neatly into the old categories or divisions of political thought. Perhaps integrity is the right word for what's desperately needed.
85 - Clavos
...you just get a nice, high-minded chuckle out of [Chávez] calling the prez an ignoramus?
Yep.
86 - Clavos
what's good for the country.
Exactly the base from which I pick my positions, Roger.
As always, YMMV.
Perhaps integrity is the right word for what's desperately needed.
Integrity. In politics. Hmmm.
Why don't you try floating that balloon inside the Beltway? They can't even spell integrity in D.C.
87 - roger nowosielski
Not integrity in politics but integrity of thought. Like I say, one's ideas shouldn't be preempted by neither the right nor the left. They should stand on their own. And that's not partisanship.
88 - Bliffle
"Can Obama Spell “Failure”?" is a title that is obviously partisan.
But if there is a failure it is most likely to be due to the republicans who are mounting a take-no-prisoners approach and employing flaming partisanship to pursue that.
The reps seem to not care about the actual content of legislation so much as they are in attacking Obama.
Their Rule Or Ruin politics will probably not work (since a partisan divided congress is unfavorable to them) and eventually the blame for failure will fall on them.