Politicians are prone to gaffes. Much of what they do revolves around words and convincing voters that their words are better than the other person’s words. Say enough things, at some point, someone will be ready with their “aha!”
Right now, the people of Poland are having a grand ole time with Washington, DC. Between former DC Mayor Marion Barry and President Obama, there may be enough fodder for people in Warsaw and Krakow to tell Washingtonian jokes at cocktail parties. In all likelihood, the President’s “Poland gaffe” was just a case of misspeaking, or just plain weariness.
These things happen from time to time. The best hope you have as a politician is that you have built enough political capital with the offended party that the flub will be overlooked. For instance,when Obamamania was running wild, voters were inclined to think that he knows how many States there are in the USA. That being said, the two highest-ranking members of our executive branch have provided some “aha” words as of late.
Joe Biden, to no one’s surprise, has gotten in on the act. When he drafts his fantasy football team, the first receiver he takes is Jabar Gaffney. When he plays “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,”he doesn’t tie Kevin to actors. Instead,he connects Kevin to the gaffers. When he fills up his car, he dons a colonial wig, so that he can buy “gafoline” (I thought this needed a highbrow pun).
Biden started off innocently enough. He went to Youngstown,Ohio and played the American Dream card in a rust belt city. That’s Politics 101. “I resent when they talk about families like mine that I grew up in. I resent the fact that they think we’re talking about envy: it’s job envy, it’s wealthy envy; that we don’t dream. My mother believed and my father believed that if I wanted to be President of the United States that I could be. I could be vice president! My mother and father believed that if my brother or sister wanted to be a millionaire, they could be a millionaire! My mother and father dreamed as much as any rich guy dreams! They don’t get us! They don’t get who we are!”
Being the self-proclaimed conservative commentator on this slice of bandwidth, I suppose I could pick this statement apart, both personally and politically. I could argue that much of what his boss wants to accomplish has little to do with dreaming, but more to do with implementing a substitute for dreaming, by creating a permanent dependent class. I’ll leave it to the community to argue whether it is on purpose or just the residue of bad policy. I suppose I could have a chuckle at the image of Ma and Pa Biden sitting Joseph on their knee talking about the Vice Presidency of the United States. But I won’t.
The gaffe here actually comes six days later. The trouble with having a profession where one is judged by their words is that they have schlubs like me who are ready to box them in with the thing they most recently said. You see, the veep went to Keene, New Hampshire and changed his tune in front of the northeastern elitist crowd. That’s Politics 102.
Biden offered this nugget to the sympathetic college crowd,”Your job as president is to promote the common good. That doesn’t mean that private equity guys are bad guys; they’re not. But that no more qualifies you to be president than being a plumber!” So plumbers aren’t worthy of the White House? What about dreaming? What about one day becoming Vice President? As far as I’m concerned, they both deal in similar commodities. The only difference is that when the politicians are selling it, it comes from a bull.
Troup’s Corner Non-Sequitur – Tea Party React: Hat tip to Bill Arrowood and crew for another first class job executing the Tea Party festival. My favorite part of the weekend is the raft race. Watching people capsize has always been a sick curiosity. When nobody did it this year I thought, “This is actually better. That’s too much work just to sink.” The greatest moment may have been when the Martinez family and the Garnett kids crossed the finish line. At some point, the winning and losing takes a back seat, and the memory of finishing something that others previously could not is something they will have forever.
Now a nit to pick. You may have noticed that both political parties had their displays for all to see. It seemed unfair for the Democratic Party to include a depiction of Martin Luther King Jr. amongst the other faces on the shrine that adorned their table. For starters, Martin Luther King’s work was non-partisan and should not be co-opted by any party. Coretta Scott King has often been confronted with questions regarding her husband’s political affiliation, and has given a similar answer.
If this is an effort to tie the party to the civil rights movement, I would remind everyone that while the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed in a Congress led by Democrats, a greater percentage of Republicans provided yes votes than did Democrats. And for all we know, Dr. King could have been registered with the GOP, as some of his family members were at that time. Regardless, I think the views of Dr. King’s widow would trump here. For my friend son the left who think I’m being overly sensitive, I’ll pose this: Do you think it would be appropriate for the GOP booth to lay claim to the work of Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman just because Lincoln was President during the Civil War and the passage of the reconstruction amendments? I don’t.
Gren Whitman says
The Kent County Democrats chose to honor Dr. Martin Luther King in their Tea Party Festival booth and the Kent County Republicans chose not to.
I find no fault with one or the other; no surprise, either.
MB Troup says
Gren
Referring to the pic in Daniel’s entry, it looked more to me like the party was positioning the display as an attempt to claim Dr King as one of their own (alongside the clearly partisan faces of Mikulski, Obama, and JFK).
The GOP display is a different ball of wax.
Gren Whitman says
Make what you will of the dueling booth displays, but I think you can agree that Democrats are comfortable with Dr. King’s politics of peace, equality, fair play, and inclusion, and that Republicans — at least the 2012 model — are not.
Bob Kramer says
It’s too bad that the folks from both booths weren’t thrown overboard… as a symbolic statement about their parties mutual ineffectiveness at running this country.
DLaMotte says
I think one booth should have been tossed in the river. Read It’s Even Worse Than it Looks by
Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein.
Gren Whitman says
Yes. Mann and Ornstein have been frozen out of most Sunday-type talk shows. They have impeccable conservative credentials, and write in the introduction to “”It’s Even Worse Than It Looks”:
“However awkward it may be for the traditional press and non-partisan analysts to acknowledge, one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
Not a pretty picture.