http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121210923476431299.html?
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OPINION
The Obama Gaffe Machine
By JOHN FUND
May 30, 2008
For months, Barack Obama has had the image of an incandescent, golden-
tongued Wundercandidate. That image may be fraying now.
As smart and credentialed as he is, Sen. Obama is often an
indifferent speaker without a teleprompter. He has large gaps in his
knowledge base, and is just as likely to dig in and embrace a policy
misstatement as abandon it. ABC reporter Jake Tapper calls him "a one-
man gaffe machine."
Take the Auschwitz flub, where Mr. Obama erroneously claimed last
weekend in New Mexico that his uncle helped liberate the Nazi
concentration camp. Reporters noted Mr. Obama's revised claim, that
it was his great uncle who helped liberate Buchenwald. They largely
downplayed the error. Yet in another, earlier gaffe back in 2002, Mr.
Obama claimed his grandfather knew U.S. troops who liberated
Auschwitz and Treblinka – even though only Russian troops entered
those concentration camps.
That hardly disqualifies Mr. Obama from being president. But you can
bet that if Hillary Clinton had done the same thing it would have
been the focus of much more attention, especially after her Bosnia
sniper-fire fib. That's because gaffes are often blown up or
downplayed based on whether or not they further a story line the
media has attached to a politician.
When John McCain claimed, while on a trip to Iraq in March, that
Sunni (as opposed to Shiite) militants in Iraq are being supported by
Iran, coverage of the alleged blunder tracked Democratic attacks on
his age and stamina. (In fact, Iran may well be supplying both Sunni
and Shiite militants.) Dan Quayle, tagged with a reputation as a dumb
blond male, never lived down his misspelling of "potatoe."
Mr. Obama, a former editor of the Harvard Law Review, has largely
been given a pass for his gaffes. Many are trivial, such as his
suggestion this month that America has 57 states, and his bizarre
statement in a Memorial Day speech in New Mexico that
America's "fallen heroes" were present and listening to him in the
audience.
Some gaffes involve mangling his family history. Last year in Selma,
Ala., for example, he said that his birth was inspired by events
there which took place four years after he was born. While this gaffe
can be chalked up to fatigue or cloudy memory, others are more
substantive – such as his denial last April that it was his
handwriting on a questionnaire in which, as a state senate candidate,
he favored a ban on handguns. His campaign now contends that, even if
it was his handwriting, this doesn't prove he read the full
questionnaire.
Mr. Obama told a Portland, Ore., crowd this month that Iran
doesn't "pose a serious threat to us," saying that "tiny countries"
with small defense budgets aren't much to worry about. But Iran has
almost one-fourth the population of the U.S. and is well on its way
to developing nuclear weapons. The next day Mr. Obama had to reverse
himself and declare he had "made it clear for years that the threat
from Iran is grave."
Last week in Orlando, Fla., he said he would meet with Venezuelan
dictator Hugo Chávez to discuss, among other issues, Chávez's support
of the Marxist FARC guerrillas in Colombia. The next day, in Miami,
he insisted any country supporting the FARC should suffer "regional
isolation." Obama advisers were left explaining how this circle could
be squared.
In a debate last July, Mr. Obama pledged to meet, without
precondition, the leaders of Iran, North Korea, Syria and Cuba. He
called President Bush's refusal to meet with them "ridiculous" and
a "disgrace."
Heavily criticized, Mr. Obama dug in rather than backtrack. He's
claimed, in defense of his position, that John F. Kennedy's 1961
summit with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna was a crucial
meeting that led to the end of the Cold War.
Not quite. Kennedy himself admitted he was unprepared for
Khrushchev's bullying. "He beat the hell out of me," Kennedy confided
to advisers. The Soviet leader reported to his Politburo that the
American president was weak. Two months later, the Berlin Wall was
erected and stood for 28 years.
Reporters may now give Mr. Obama's many gaffes more notice. But don't
count on them correcting an implicit bias in writing about such faux
pas.
Over the years, reporters have tagged a long list of conservative
public figures, from Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan to George W.
Bush, as dim and uninformed. The reputation of some of these men has
improved over time. But can anyone name a leading liberal figure who
has developed a similar media reputation, even though the likes of Al
Gore, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have committed substantial gaffes
at times? No reporter I've talked to has come up with a solid example.
It's clear some gaffes are considered more newsworthy than others.
But it would behoove the media to check their premises when deciding
just how much attention to pay to them. The best guideline might be:
Show some restraint and judgment, but report them all.
Mr. Fund is a columnist for WSJ.com.
See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on
Opinion Journal.
And add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum.
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