5 Politicians Who Tanked Their Chances in the Fewest Words Possible
Given Trump’s and (Trumpalikes’) recent strategy for running for office, the reputation of politicians as people who are careful with every word has been pretty much decimated. At one point, they were famous for their tiptoeing, nothing answers, but now you can pretty much call someone a fat pig and get away with it. Sure, the center-middle-left of Twitter will clutch their pearls and call it shameful, but there is an incredible amount of pudding and the proof within it on display at this point.
Back in the day, though, there was a good reason for all the hemming and hawing from the podium: a single slip-up could have dire consequences for the totality of your political goals. A lifetime of public service could go slithering down the drain like one big, honorable turd if you said one thing on mic that made you sound like an idiot. It didn’t matter if it was a mistake probably half of Americans would make, you were supposed to be the smart guy around here!
Here are five politicians who tanked their chances in the fewest words possible…
Dan Quayle Misspells Potato
George W. Bush was able to ride out a reputation for generally poor grammar and a less-than ideal grasp of the English language all the way to the White House. That must have stung especially for one of the men running against him early in the 2000 election, Dan Quayle. Quayle had been Vice President under Dubya’s father, George H.W. Bush, until Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, and had similarly been tagged as a dull Crayon, but without the last name recognition to appease voters.
The peak moment that he’d never be able to escape came at an appearance at a New Jersey middle school. He was put in charge of a mock spelling bee, a run-of-the-mill hand-shaking and baby-kissing type photo-op that was about to go horribly wrong. When one of the children correctly spelled “potato,” which, if any of you are curious, is spelled “potato,” Quayle stepped in to suggest that it should have been “potatoe.” Not how you shake a rep for being smooth-brained. He blamed an inaccurate note card given to him by the school, but c’mon, man. If you’re not confident in your own ability to spell “potato,” you don’t get nukes.
Gerald Ford’s Soviet Union Slipup
When it comes to possible presidents, people generally prefer them to be current on world news. When that world news includes potential wartime adversaries, even more so. If someone asks in a debate what your stance on North Korea is, the worst possible answer is something along the lines of “why, what are they doing over there?” So when presidential candidate Gerald Ford displayed either a brain fart or a genuine confusion about what countries the Soviet Union was in control of, it made it pretty hard to recover.
Even worse, it was during a televised debate, an instance in which it’s pretty hard to argue that you weren’t ready for the question. What’d you do, leave the pack of note cards labeled “Soviet Stuff” on the Metro? Ford was debating future president Jimmy Carter when he said, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,” which prompted even the moderator to go, “I’m sorry, what?” It’s the political equivalent of an own goal, and a sign to Carter that he was home free.