I tend to give politicians a generous pass for uttering silliness on the campaign trail. The schedule can be grueling and everyone misspeaks from time to time under normal conditions, so one can imagine why candidates so often speak themselves into a ditch. But I have to admit that this recent column from Michelle Malkin about Barack Obama’s verbal gaffes is pretty entertaining. Have you heard all of these?
? Last May, he claimed that tornadoes in Kansas killed a whopping 10,000
people: ?In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in
Kansas. Ten thousand people died ? an entire town destroyed.? The
actual death toll: 12.? Earlier this month in Oregon, he redrew the map of the United States:
?Over the last 15 months, we?ve traveled to every corner of the United
States. I?ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.?? Last week, in front of a roaring Sioux Falls, S.D., audience, Obama
exulted: ?Thank you, Sioux City. … I said it wrong. I?ve been in Iowa
for too long. I?m sorry.?? Explaining last week why he was trailing Hillary Clinton in Kentucky,
Obama again botched basic geography: ?Sen. Clinton, I think, is much
better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it?s not
surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in
the middle.? On what map is Arkansas closer to Kentucky than Illinois?? Obama has as much trouble with numbers as he has with maps. Last March,
on the anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Ala., he
claimed his parents united as a direct result of the civil rights
movement: ?There was something stirring across the country because of
what happened in Selma, Ala., because some folks are willing to march
across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born.?Obama was born in 1961. The Selma march took place in 1965. His
spokesman, Bill Burton, later explained that Obama was ?speaking
metaphorically about the civil-rights movement as a whole.?? Earlier this month in Cape Girardeau, Mo., Obama showed off his
knowledge of the war in Afghanistan by homing in on a lack of
translators: ?We only have a certain number of them, and if they are
all in Iraq, then it?s harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.? The
real reason it?s ?harder for us to use them? in Afghanistan: Iraqis
speak Arabic or Kurdish. The Afghanis speak Pashto, Farsi, or other
non-Arabic languages.
There’s more. And Malkin is right in her conclusion that if this were a different candidate, one that the media didn’t dig so much, a string of such gaffes would have long ago become a central theme of the campaign coverage.
