Protocol.

Via Andrew Malcolm, we have a pre-holiday bit of frivolity for Hot Air readers, and perhaps an example of the media tilt I mentioned in an earlier post.  When George W. Bush gave Angela Merkel an unannounced (and unwanted) neck massage, the media turned it into a narrative of his diplomatic ineptitude.  We haven’t heard [...]

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Support.

Somewhere in the gray area between a gaffe and a Freudian slip lies this bon mot. I know where he’s coming from, though: There hasn’t been a day in the last four years when I wasn’t not proud to have this guy as VP. I’m also not unashamed of The One. His latest revisionism, in [...]

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“His solution to everything is to add another bureaucrat.”

Professional politicians don’t usually throw their opponents a bone this big in the final week of an election — which is why this qualified as an Obamateurism yesterday, of course.  Truly professional politicians don’t bury the bone, either, but chew on it, and Mitt Romney delivers today in an ad attacking Barack Obama for going [...]

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Also, Joe Biden: Super-creepy sex symbol

Vice President Joe Biden, speaking on the campaign trail in Charlotte, N.C. today, offered an unvarnished assessment of the Obama economy: First, he repeats the myth that Mitt Romney will “raise taxes” on the middle class— “raising their taxes with this tax cut,” as Joe so Bidenly puts it. Second, he says Romney can’t possibly [...]

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Yeah.

It depresses me to think that the left might actually have convinced itself that Romney doesn’t have a sixth-grader’s grasp on air travel, so I’m not going to think it. I’m going to chalk up the blog tizzy over this today to a dearth of hard news combined with the fact that it’s irresistibly fun [...]

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“You recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem."

If this is the second-best clip that Mother Jones has on Mitt Romney, I think his campaign can breathe a sigh of relief.  MJ headlines this as “On Israel, Romney Trashes Two-State Solution,” but that’s not accurate.  What Romney actually says is that peace isn’t possible because the Palestinians won’t accept a two-state plan as [...]

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Or am I just bitterly clinging?

I got home late last night and missed most of the hysteria over Mitt Romney’s remarks at a fundraiser in May, but I’m glad to see I didn’t miss all of it.  Here’s Josh Barro at Bloomberg, telling us we can take a 50-day nap, because the election is all over now that Romney has [...]

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"I would just say do you regret your question... I mean your statement."

I don’t think it’s the collusion that’s troubling so much as their priorities in what they were colluding on. Hard to make firm judgments on a 100-second piece of audio that cuts in and out and is sporadically unintelligible, but part of it is clear enough. From the Right Scoop’s transcript: CBS REPORTER: Yeah that’s [...]

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Plus, the art of surviving the gaffe.

Yesterday, I made my first appearance on local TV since 2005, during the Adscam story that briefly made me a curious intrusion on Canadian politics.  It’s not for a lack of invitations; KMSP has been asking me to appear for quite a while, but the timing has always been bad.  Last night, though, the stars [...]

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"The mistake I made was in the words I said, not in the heart I hold. I ask for your forgiveness."

Can Todd Akin hang onto his Republican nomination for the US Senate after a disastrous interview over the weekend, in which he questioned the legitimacy of rape claims from women who got impregnated by their assaulters?  He’s giving it a try, with a new ad out this morning called “Forgiveness,” which ends the explanations and [...]

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Liabilities.

The Obama team on Sunday maintained that Vice President Joe Biden has not become a liability to the president’s reelection bid, despite the recent Republican backlash over his latest gaffe… Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter, reaffirmed the president’s confidence in Biden and noted his comment, while awkwardly delivered, did highlight an important difference between [...]

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Chains of Fools.

I could have added this as an update to the post earlier this morning, but this is too much fun to have buried at the bottom of a thread.  American Crossroads has a new ad out today that rejects the skepticism and cynicism that has some (Democrats) urging our esteemed Vice President to do almost [...]

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Did Palin cut off the escape route?

He’s in North Carolina when he’s in Virginia.  He thinks Paul Ryan is governor of … one of the states numbered 51 through 57.  He’s not even clear in which century he’s living.  He’s Joe Biden, and he’s one heartbeat away from the Presidency.  Or will he be for long?  The week’s misadventures for Sheriff [...]

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"People think well, he just talks a little too much. Actually, he’s just not very smart."

Woah there, Giuliani — tell us how you really feel! The former GOP presidential hopeful had harsh words for Biden in the wake of a statement the vice president made yesterday, when Biden told a Virginia audience with a large African American presence that Republicans and Wall Street will “put y’all back in chains.” “I [...]

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...Merp.

Who hasn’t had some sort of rockstar-esque, “Thank you, Cincinnat– er, Denver!” slip-of-the-tongue moment of public-speaking horror, and Vice President Joe Biden was stumping in North Carolina yesterday. And, North Carolina and Virginia are similar in electoral weight, their usually-quite-reddish-but-lately-more-purplish recent histories, and their too-close-to-call swing statuses… but, still: It’s Biden. It’s kind of funny. “With [...]

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...Really?

Yes, Gibbs would want us to seize on any gaffe of Mitt Romney’s as a campaign issue of unrivaled importance, since any available distractions are the only thing standing between President Obama and the public’s undivided attention on his horrendous economic record. video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player “Mitt Romney wondered aloud whether London was ready [...]

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"They're what he believes."

What is the RNC trying to do — put the OOTD feature out of business?  Well, yes, but only by ending Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House at one term.  Working from the “You didn’t build that” quote, the RNC has a new television ad out today that rebuts the media portrayal of Obama’s [...]

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Dunzo.

When it comes to facepalm-worthy political gaffes, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has given Vice President Biden a run for his money. While nobody could doubt her fierce loyalty to President Obama, the execution of her vociferous defense is often somewhat… wanting. From insisting that Republicans hope to “literally” drag the nation back [...]

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Groan.

Via the Corner, this is what happens when the big political story on tap for today — a Syriza win in Greece followed by a global market meltdown over the break-up of the eurozone — gets canceled at the last minute, leaving the press to scramble for “news.” Here’s Andrea Mitchell straining to turn this [...]

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The gift of gaffe.

The Romney campaign goes negative for the first time, as Jim Geraghty points out,  in the general-election cycle — at least on television.  Team Romney has been hitting Barack Obama for his remark that “the private sector is doing fine” almost from the moment he said it last week.  Mitt Romney himself slammed Obama’s remarks [...]

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Memory.

Yesterday, Barack Obama told an audience at a campaign rally that “sometimes I forget” the magnitude of the recession … and today, the RNC wants to make sure everyone remembers this quote.  Their rapid-response team already has a video spot up less than 24 hours later, complete with somber, funereal music and the obvious data [...]

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"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads."

Copy editors and fact-checkers are in short supply these days, as newspapers and websites daily attest. Apparently, that’s true of Joe Biden’s office, too. The vice president’s staff recently circulated a press release that promotes Biden’s trip to “Road Island.” “On Thursday, the Vice President will travel to Boston, Massachusetts, Manchester, New Hampshire and Providence, [...]

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Terrific.

Via National Journal, a new bit he’s working on as part of the “Indian accents” segment of the stand-up routine that is his political career. (If I’m not mistaken, “Indian accents” debuted on Biden’s double live album “Clean and Articulate.”) This is one of those gaffes where I feel obliged to mock him in the [...]

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Good ol' what's-her-name.

We’re in the last week for OOTDs this year, since we’ll start working our way through the year-end polls next Monday to determine the Obamateurism of the Year. Today, we recognize that Presidents have a lot of names to keep straight — but how hard is it to remember one of the nine Supreme Court [...]

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