There have been plenty of gaffes and negative stories during this campaign season, but many have noticed a trend emerge: gaffes originating from Barack Obama, his administration and his campaign are often mitigated by a lack of coverage. The past two weeks has been a primary example of this phenomenon as countless embarrassing stories and statements from President Obama and his reelection campaign have been mostly ignored by much of the press. One has to wonder how these would be covered if they had come from a Republican:
1) President Obama stated that concern over Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is just “noise.” Interestingly, this is the same word that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used on this topic.
2) Ambassador Susan Rice and other members of the administration falsely blamed a video and spontaneous protests for the terrorist attack against our Libyan embassy.
3) President Obama described the September 11th terrorist attack in Libya that led to the death of four Americans, including a U.S. Ambassador, as a “bump in the road.”
4) Senior Obama Campaign Strategist David Axelrod told Mark Halperin “this is not the time” for the President to put forward a plan to reform Social Security.
5) President Obama stated that his biggest lesson from his first term was that “you can’t change Washington from the inside.” Considering that President Obama’s entire 2008 election was based on the idea of bringing change to Washington, this is essentially an admission that he has failed. Some have tried to point to Romney previously stating that change has to come from outside Washington, but he isn’t the President and he hasn’t run on “hope and change.” Obama was supposed to be the one that brought the change to Washington. Now he is on the inside and says you can’t change it from the inside. Perhaps that means he would do a better job at it from the outside after 2012?
6) President Obama said that Egypt was not an ally, only to then be contradicted by his own State Department.
7) Obama declined a request to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but has found time to do several fundraising and campaign events, one of which was a $40,000 per head event with Hollywood royalty Beyoncé and Jay-Z.
8) President Obama’s Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter claimed that women are “not really concerned” with what has happened in the past four years. This statement displays an amazing amount of ignorance regarding the real concerns of actual women (and this is not surprising from a campaign that constantly seems to suggest that abortion is the only issue about which women care.)
9) A State Department Spokesperson told a reporter to “f**k off” after facing questions about why the Libyan embassy was not secured after the attack and why the State Department has released several contradictory statements.
10) Obama has skipped numerous intelligence briefings recently, including a briefing immediately following the attack on the Libyan embassy so that he could fly to a fundraiser in Las Vegas.
Bonus: This hasn’t been considered a gaffe, but it likely should be. The Obama Campaign is pushing a video of Mitt Romney explaining why capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than regular income. They claim it shows Romney “saying it’s fair for multimillionaires like himself to pay a lower tax rate than many middle-class families,” but that is a completely misleading statement.
Everyone pays the same rate for capital gains, but Romney happens to earn most of his income in that manner. As Romney explains in the video, capital has already been taxed once at a higher rate and the lower rate is to encourage investment and growth. The fact that Obama is attacking this rate and comparing it to income tax rates shows a stunning ignorance of economics and job creation from a President that already has a questionable record on those subjects.
About Allen Ginzburg
Allen – great list. I have one addition. In the same “you can’t change Washington from the inside” interview, the President was asked about the biggest regret of his presidency. He answered that it was that he was not able to enact immigration reform. With 42 plus (?) months of unemployment above 8%, an economy in the tank, the middle east in flames, and the country about to drive off of a fiscal cliff – this answer was almost comical.
Yes Joe, Obama saying he regrets not “being able” to enact immigration reform is at once comical and tragic, considering he had the majority in both chambers of Congress for two years and made absolutely no attempt to do so. He was too busy imposing a failed stimulus upon us and ramming Healthcare Reform through against the will of the people, and I might add that he did so in the middle of the night, behind locked doors, without giving Republicans a chance to be present, and did THAT in the presence of lobbyists. Remember he campaigned on the promise that lobbyists would have NO PLACE in the decision making of his administration and that he would see to it that lobbyists’ time in Washington was over.
Joe – I considered that answer as a choice. Not only because it is a bad answer, but because it was a bad effort pander that contradicts about ten other things that he has listed as his biggest regrets or failures.
Joe – I considered that answer as a choice. Not only because it is a bad answer, but because it was a bad effort to pander that contradicts about ten other things that he has listed as his biggest regrets or failures.
I’ll take the Mormon over the Moron every time.
Here’s a Biden gaffe that nobody is reporting.
See Biden’s speech on 9/18/2012 in Ottumwa, Iowa: http://uneditedpolitics.com/2012/09/19/vice-president-joe-biden-speech-in-ottumwa-iowa-91812/
Around 2:20, Biden is comparing and contrasting the candidates for President and VP. He is trying to appear to be nice, so he says that Romney and Ryan are both good family men, just like Obama and himself. Then he says, “and that’s where the differences end.”
That’s exactly the opposite of what he meant to communicate. He have said, “That’s where the similarities end,” or, “that’s where the differences begin.”
If Dan Quayle – or ANY Republican – had made that obvious error, he would have been pilloried for saying the exact opposite of what he meant. And Biden is a heartbeat away from the Oval Office? Yikes!