I’ve been seeing this thrown up against the wall a few times, as though it means anything: \u00c2\u00a0Obama referring to having campaigned in “57 states”. \u00c2\u00a0There are a number of categories of gaffes — some telling and others not telling — and on Obama’s “57 states” I want to state baldly and boldly: anyone who makes hay out of this item is guilty of an intellectual dishonesty in service of partisan hackery. \u00c2\u00a0This gaffe falls into a category of “knew what he was saying as soon as he said it.” \u00c2\u00a0The Obama — Clinton contest, in case you forgot, wound its way not only through 50 individual state contests, but also several election contests in geographic locales that are not states — the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and Guam and American Somoa are four of the seven locales Obama had briefly jumbled into the category of “states”. \u00c2\u00a0This is not to say anything one way or the other about Obama — he could still occupy whatever pejorative you have him slotted — Communist, Fascist, or Anti-Christ — it is just that his reference to “57 states” should not be used in service to the pejorative.<\/p>\n
I will go one further in striking up for categories of gaffes. \u00c2\u00a0As funny as it was, Michele Bachmann’s reference to John Wayne as a local hero, when John Wayne Gacy was the local celebrity of note, is of a similar ilk. \u00c2\u00a0In the end, Bachmann’s reference to John Wayne is meaningless in understanding Bachmann. \u00c2\u00a0It is mostly an example of the absurdity of the process — something like Spinal Tap looking down on their hands to give a shout out to Springfield<\/a> — though, calling out John Wayne Gacy is more appropriate for your Heavy Metal Band than for your political candidate for high office.<\/p>\n The Historical Anachronism category of gaffes can go any direction. \u00c2\u00a0Sarah Palin eliminates any doubt for how much leniency you should give her statement on Paul Revere — when given a chance to correct herself, she refused to admit any mistake. \u00c2\u00a0Ergo: fling away at her, and add this to her collection of political debris. \u00c2\u00a0I don’t know quite what to make of Michele Bachmann bringing John Quincy Adams into the fore as a Founding Father. \u00c2\u00a0I happen to be a fan of John Quincy Adams — a fine public servant who contributed greatly to this country as Secretary of State, Congressman, and to a lesser extent as President. \u00c2\u00a0His background was a privileged one, and while it is useful to note his formative years having him surrounded by Founders from his perch the son of one of the Founders– \u00c2\u00a0he was not advising anyone at the age of eight. \u00c2\u00a0I guess what Bachmann is doing is expanding the circle of Founders in order to get more blunt and more direct statements against slavery (though not all that direct, and not all that early in his career<\/a>) into the mix — from out of David Barton’s work<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0In that sense, this is probably worse than Joseph Biden’s goofy “Roosevelt rallied a nation against the Depression on tv<\/a>” (He first kicked Hoover to the curb, and then broke right into the top-rated “Felix the Cat Doll Show”<\/a>, I suppose<\/a>) due to the systematic nature of her historical purview — but\u00c2\u00a0not quite up to the level of Palin’s Revere comments. \u00c2\u00a0But the problem with Bachmann is that she carries enough baggage besides her holding onto the youthful zeal of John Quincy Adams that I’d just as soon let other matters overshadow this one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been seeing this thrown up against the wall a few times, as though it means anything: \u00c2\u00a0Obama referring to having campaigned in “57 states”. \u00c2\u00a0There are a number of categories of gaffes — some telling and others not telling — and on Obama’s “57 states” I want to state baldly and boldly: anyone who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8520"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8524,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8520\/revisions\/8524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}