The point is that Obama’s enemies jumped all over the "respect’ mistake as yet another of many examples where the so-called mainstream "liberal" media gave the President a pass on something the right-wing does not believe they would have been so kindly towards had it been a Republican president. (Note that I am using the term "Obama’s enemies" rather than "Republicans" as I do believe that there are many honorable Republicans out there who genuinely wish to work with the president but are not being allowed to by the more radical factions of the party.)
Of course, everyone knew why Obama was not skewered for this minor mistake. First, it wasn’t really even a mistake. Obama was reading off a teleprompter. If anyone could be blamed, it was whatever staffer had typed the speech into the prompter, evidently having made a typo that nobody including the prez caught before he actually said it out loud. In other words, the only thing Obama was guilty of as commander-in-chief and leader of the free world was being focused on reading the speech rather than proofreading ahead of his prompter as he was giving it.
Kennedy had a similar experience in Houston in giving a speech at the Space Center in which he misspoke the word "payload" as "payroll" when he said, "It was the biggest payroll, uh payload, to ever go into space." The crowd completely let it go despite the obvious flub. But Kennedy, being the compleat politician, was a master of using his remarkable wit to turn his goofs to his advantage. After reading one more line of his speech, Kennedy paused for several seconds, then chuckled and said, "It was the biggest payroll to ever go into space." Everyone roared; the remark brought the house down and earned JFK an ovation for being quick on his feet.
But Kennedy was poking fun at himself, which was completely appropriate. Obama did the right thing in letting the "respect" error go, as did the audience and the media. Sure, he could have stopped and made a joke about it, but such a joke would only have been at the expense of what everyone knew was a very understandable slip by a low-level staffer. That would not have been very classy.
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But for Obama’s enemies to seize on this as yet another opportunity to criticize a president they hate only exposes them once again as very foolish politicos who just don’t get it. They don’t get that there’s a reason why the media follows politicians around and sometimes jumps all over trivial mistakes, while other times letting them go. There is a reason why politics and particularly campaigning is quite frequently mean and nasty, or at least appears that way. I say "appears" because most of these guys, though they snipe at each other frequently on camera, actually are quite good friends who often golf and dine and drink together as soon as the cameras are gone. But there is a reason why they put on these shows and why the press obliges them by putting on shows of their own.
I go along with the aphorism I heard one particular political commentator express during one particular presidential campaign. "It is good that politics is so rough and nasty, and that campaigns are so rough and nasty. Because no matter how rough things get, it is absolutely nothing, ABSOLUTELY nothing compared to the job itself."
It is so true. How many candidates do you see grow visibly older during a campaign, no matter how nasty? Almost none. How many presidents do you see go gray while in office? Almost all. Yes, the job is much tougher so please, let’s be grateful for a system of severe rough and tumble to weed out the weaklings. For it is a fact – anyone who cannot do well in a campaign will not do well in the office. The proof of this is that our weakest presidents are those who achieved their office through less than purely legitimate means. They found a way to win via party machinery that allowed them to succeed despite the fact that they were not the most skilled politically. This is also why military training is so rough. They are trying to prepare these troops for combat and, as rough as it is, it is nothing compared to actual combat. Of course, the only way to approximate combat in training is to treat the troops the same way the enemy would. And that would be inhuman.
No, politics must be rough since the job is so much rougher. For all the complaining we voters do about how crazy things are in the halls of government, things would be a great deal worse if not for this vetting process. So the media let Obama off the hook for spelling respect as "rspect." And the right-wing got inflamed for doing so while not extending the same courtesy to the likes of Dan Quayle. Of course, they neglect to mention the massive differences between the "potato" incident and anything Obama has ever done.
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Quayle had been invited to be a guest judge at a New Jersey elementary school spelling bee in a low income school district. It was supposed to be a photo-op to show how not all inner-city youngsters are underachievers, that some are actually quite bright. So this ten year old spells "potato" correctly and Quayle, the man a heartbeat away from the presidency, is not competent enough in 6th grade English to recognize that it is indeed the correct spelling. He believes the correct spelling is "potatoe."
There are any number of ways he could have handled this but what he chooses to do is embarrass this ten year old by pointing out that he’s spelled the word incorrectly. The ten year old it seems is brighter than our vice-president as he immediately but politely challenges Quayle. "Excuse me sir, but I believe you must be mistaken. Potato is not spelled with an e." There are any number of more polite ways that Quayle could now have continued to handle this. Instead, he arrogantly stands his ground and insists that the child is wrong. The child now shuts up but it takes a school staffer only a minute to produce a dictionary to prove that the person who cannot spell a common word – and won’t admit he cannot spell a common word – is not the ten year old. Quayle gets all embarrassed (rightfully so) and slinks away with his tail between his legs.
The press has a field day. What should have been a totally nothing event instead mushrooms into a national incident which neither Quayle nor Bush could live down. Even Bush does a crappy job of fielding all the "potatoe" jokes, at times even defending his running mate’s mistake. And five months later the duo is voted out of office. As I said, there are some political cynics (chiefly Republicans) who blame this spelling bee for bringing Bush down. I would prefer to think the defeat had a lot more to do with the horrible economic mess Bush’s policies had gotten us into and his total inability to do deal with it. (Remember, "it’s the economy, stupid!") But that’s just me. I prefer to believe that voters only penalize candidates on big issues, not because they can’t spell words like "potato."
Quayle has always defended his actions by claiming that he was the judge after all so when he saw a different spelling on the answer key he was provided, it was his duty to penalize the kid – EVEN THOUGH – and this is the big kicker – he CLAIMS that he strongly suspected the answer key was wrong as, even as he was looking at it before rendering his decision, it did not look right and he could not recall ever before having seen the word spelled with an e. He claims he simply did not want to embarrass the school staff by questioning whether the answer key was correct. Right. He feared embarrassing teachers but had no qualms at all about doing the same to the ten year old.
Even if he is being truthful, it is still bad news for him. There were far more constructive options he could have pursued. If he had his doubts that the answer key was wrong, he could have requested a quick private consultation with the teacher who was in charge and expressed his doubts. He could have said, "This doesn’t look right. I hate to embarrass the kid. Would you mind checking this to be sure before I have to disqualify this young man?" He could have done that. And he could have done other things. If he had been a little brighter still, he would have instantly known that the answer key was wrong and made brownie points for himself by taking the initiative to praise the kid and point out publicly that the key was wrong. "This card says it’s spelled with an "e" but I know that’s wrong. Young man, you have it." I guess we can all be grateful he didn’t choose this path. It may very well have made a hero out of him as the savior of young children and we may have had to suffer through four more years of Bush.
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But I jest. There’s no chance that he might have chosen this path because he’s just flat out lying. He never suspected it was misspelled on the card he was given. He just accepted it because he didn’t know any better. Of course, there’s no shame in even the Vice President of the United States not knowing how to spell a simple word like potato. Henry Kissinger was notorious for being a lousy speller, as was Richard Nixon. His own boss bragged about not ever reading a daily paper so it’s probably safe to assume that GHW Bush couldn’t spell either. So what?
The issue is not that Quayle couldn’t spell potato. It’s that he was so arrogant about his ignorance. Worse, much worse, he tried to cover up his ignorance and make a scapegoat out of a ten year old. Much worse still, he was so politically incompetent that he allowed a petty incident to become a major issue against him in the campaign. If Bush had been the superior candidate, Quayle's ineptitude might have cost the country the right president. And that is no small matter.
If Quayle had had any political talent at all, he could have easily deflected this incident, laughed it off, and had it forgotten by the next day’s news. That is why the media harps on these things. These reporters are looking to test these candidates. I’m sure they could honestly care less if they catch a politician misspelling a word. What they do care about, what they care a great deal about, is their ability to take this minor ribbing and deal with it in an intelligent manner. Is the candidate going to be quick on his feet and maybe even turn this trivial thing to his advantage, or is he going to expose himself as a total amateur and go sulking off into the corner, from then on whining about how unfairly he’s being treated.
That’s why the potato incident was probably the greatest service the press gave the voters during the campaign of 1992. They were able to handily expose the vice president as a bumbling amateur who chose to whine about how unfairly he was treated. It was valuable to the American public to see how badly he mishandled this trivial incident. If he’s this clumsy with something this petty, how would he handle a real conflict in the Oval Office such as with China? Can you imagine him sulking away from a clash with Putin complaining that he’s being treated unfairly? Yes, this is politics. He is going to be treated unfairly. So how does he play that hand?
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This is what he and his supporters never got, that though it seemed unfair, unfair was precisely the point. Governing is hard and Quayle repeatedly demonstrated he did not have the spine for it. Spelling potato with an e was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. All of our presidents have had to deal with extensive criticism, fair and unfair. Our greatest presidents were masters at turning their little goofs to their advantage. Our worst leaders always allowed these petty issues to unseat them. FDR was a master of the radio chat. JFK was the first television president and the first president to make extensive use of wit to disarm the press and the public. Reagan of course was known as the Great Communicator. He also earned the moniker of the Teflon President because of his uncanny skill of getting into big messes but nothing ever stuck to him personally. Quite the contrast to Richard Nixon who was called the Cellophane President because he foolishly tried to cover up all his messes, but everyone could see right through him. Clinton was hugely successful at dodging all the many bullets his opponents and the press threw at him throughout his two terms. And Obama proved once again with the Aretha Franklin episode that there’s no conflict big or small that can set him back.
So when his enemies threw a fit last month at his minor spelling error (which was really no spelling error at all) and accused the media of playing favorites for not doing the same with Dan Quayle, they were completely missing the point. The bigger point that they’re missing is that, when they throw fits like this over something this stupid, they just make themselves look foolish and that just makes Obama look better. Since that’s not what they want, they’re not being very smart.
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To be fair to Dan Quayle, when I did a little research I discovered there was evidence that the potatoe incident may have been a setup. According to one report (from a Republican source of course), when Quayle’s team was arranging the photo-op with the school, the school’s principal allegedly contacted The Trentonian to send over a reporter. As the story goes, the editor of this Democrat-oriented newspaper did not see the news value of the veep judging a 6th grade spelling bee so told the principal he’d need to provide a better incentive for them to come. The accusation is that the principal conspired with The Trentonian to intentionally give Quayle a misspelled card. With that they sent reporters and photographers to the scene in the hopes that they would catch the veep doing exactly what he would do.
Just as with Quayle’s claim that he knew the word was misspelled but was afraid of embarrassing the teachers, this story has a very false ring to it. But even if it is true, so what? They wanted to see how he would react to even a very small crisis. Would he deal with it like a skillful politician, or would he sulk away? The American people had the right to know what a potential future president would do.
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Finally there’s Pope Francis, who was engaged in a very similar bit of trivia right about the same time that Obama was misspelling respect. The pope was giving a speech to an Italian crowd and chose to speak to them in Italian. He was trying to use the word "fate" and the Italian for fate is "caso." Instead he said "cazzo," which is the word for the f-bomb. So the pope really got royally cazzoed and everyone had a good laugh, but certainly let it go. There was ample acknowledgment among the reporters that this was a very common error among Spanish speaking people trying to converse in Italian. It may very well have been the first time in history that a pope used that word in public. It reminded me of Marijo’s little faux pas in Mexico when she tried complimenting the chef at a restaurant, but ended up calling him a pig instead of a good cook. Yes, the Spanish words for pig and cook are very similar.
Did the media give Francis a pass because he’s a progressive? Would they have skewered Benedict or John Paul II for the same error? My guess is that all three popes were more than capable of smiling at themselves for these little slips, and that’s all the press wanted to see. This is less about politics and more about gamesmanship, something Obama’s enemies haven’t learned yet. Or better yet, couldn’t they just learn that the best form of gamesmanship is simply getting along? Oh, wouldn’t the country be so much better off!
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