Searching for Gaffes

There are many varieties of political gaffes. I enjoy the ones that are simply moments when a campaign's painstakingly constructed image is cracked with a single errant action or utterance. We learn something about a candidate that they didn't really want us to know, or were hoping we wouldn't notice. They get lots of coverage, and most of the time, deservedly so.

Although it's was an action and not a statement, I think John Edwards' haircut is one such example. It seemed sort of silly, but it turned out to be a little window into the thinking of a very vain man who was willing to indulge in excesses and take risks that, if discovered, would be pretty damaging. And instead of becoming more disciplined, he turned to even more subterfuge.

There are also simple human mistakes, missteps that anyone could make. But we scribblers blow them up anyway for lots of reasons - slow news day, humor, web hits, or it fits into to some simplistic narrative about the candidate we want to milk.

I think Michele Bachmann's mistaken assertion that John Wayne was born in Waterloo, when it was really the homicidal clown John Wayne Gacy who lived there, falls into that category. She got facts mixed up in her head. And they're facts of little real consequence. It may have damaged her effort to portray her Minnesota self as an real live Iowan. But that was already a tough sell.

I've lived here all my life and I didn't know John Wayne Gacy was from Waterloo. Perhaps I heard and forgot. I did know John Wayne was born in Winterset. Good for me.

There was much pouncing, pointing and laughing in the media interwebs. Which, of course, only makes Bachmann more powerful. She feeds off media derision. It's a badge of honor. A lot of Iowa Republicans love her in no small part because liberals and the lamestream look down on her. The elites think we're all dense, so we'll show them. In that context, her little gaffe my have bought her a couple polling percentage points.

I'd like to think we could sort out the significant gaffe from the chaff, but I'm not delusional in the era of instant worldwide humiliation. I'm pretty sure the online economy depends on it. Maybe some journalism training outfit like Poynter will do a workshop on covering gaffes and pratfalls.

That's not to say Bachmann should be handled like fine china. No way. When someone who professes to be a constitutional scholar and tea gulping descendant of the founders fouls up historical facts pertaining to both, she deserves what she gets. Our kids don't know much about history, but it would be nice if our president did. The three-fifths compromise and Lexington/Concord are not exactly graduate level stuff.

She also shouldn't get away with fudging facts. No candidate should.

Oh, and there's the reality that her legislative record is wafer-thin.

The issue is not whether she's ready to be an Iowa tour guide. It's whether she's ready to be president of the USA.

And, for the record, my favorite Wayne movie is "The Searchers." (With several others tied for second.)