Today's Political Rant

In a speech the other day, Sarah Palin referred to the White House as "1400 Pennsylvania Avenue" and way too much is being made of it. This is one of my beefs with political discourse these days. It's the folks who lie in wait for The Opposition to misspeak or have a momentary brain fart, and then try to sell it as proof that the person is stupid, addled or otherwise not to be taken seriously. Ms. Palin says plenty of things intentionally I believe are wrong or disingenuous. This kind of "gaffe" is like a writer hitting the wrong keys on a keyboard and spelling a word wrong.

I felt the same way about some of George W. Bush's clumsier phrasing or Barack Obama saying he'd visited 57 states or the time Jimmy Carter referred to Hubert Horatio Humphrey as Hubert Horatio Hornblower or…

Well, they all do it at one time or another and to exploit it as more than an amusing blooper is real schoolyard. How about if we hold people responsible for what they meant, rather than their verbal slip-ups?