Editor's Note: In effort to expand our coverage of the 2024 election, we've (somehow) convinced Boo to serve as our chief political expert lady. For more Flappr election insights, check out the Election Spectacular edition of Serious Matters and Unfolding Trends.
I can’t say that this election season has been enjoyable. I’ve found it frequently cringeworthy, sometimes painful, and almost always incredibly annoying. But at least it’s been entertaining. What else could it be when it started with two octogenarian men each with a propensity to say whatever nutty thing is floating around in his fevered head?
Biden, especially, has been a gaffe machine, churning out truly insane insults like “lying dog faced pony soldier”, calling Zelinsky “President Putin”, calling his own VP, Kamala Harris, “Vice-President Trump”, and sleeping through a summit.
Biden dropped out, but that didn’t stop the gaffes. Just last week, he seemingly called all Trump supporters “garbage.” (In the grand scope of things “garbage” probably wasn’t as bad as the Democrats’ VP candidate, Timothy Walz, calling the Trump supporters at his Madison Square Garden rally Nazis, but still not very nice.) That got me thinking about other campaign gaffes in past campaigns, which I thought I’d post here as a nice election day treat.
The dullest ones are the gaffes where the candidate just says something dumb or ignorant. True to form, one of the dullest candidates in my lifetime, Gerald Ford, had a dull, but impactful gaffe during one of his debates with Carter. He claimed there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and followed that up by saying Poland was not dominated by the Soviets. I was a kid at the time, but even I knew the Soviets dominated the Poles. But, Gary Johnson in 2016 not knowing what Aleppo is was pretty funny, mostly because he’s a stoner and a bit of a lightweight. (Full disclosure: I voted for him anyway.)
The most common kind of gaffe is the one where the candidate, often inadvertently, reveals his or her true feelings about a group of voters. Obama had the worst one in 2008, saying about working-class voters “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Ah, how I miss the snooty disdain and contempt of Barack Obama, looking down at the hoi polloi from his lofty perch.
Romney got blasted in 2012 for claiming during a debate that he had “binders full of women” as job applicants. Also snooty and, in addition, condescending, but coming from an earnest boy scout like Romney, it was not nearly worth the faux vapors and garment rending by the Democrats. That one went on for weeks and weeks without end.
And, of course, we all remember Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment in 2016, generating thousands and thousands of Twitter handles and much wailing and gnashing of teeth. In her defense, she didn’t refer to all of Trump’s supporters, but I enjoy that the MAGA brethren stood together as one with their deplorable comrades.
At bottom, these gaffes are just lame insults, only made interesting because a candidate is not supposed to say out loud the level to which he loathes the people not voting for him. Nonetheless, they can be fun for batting around the candidate you hate and wallowing in pretend self-pity over the insult. And they’re quite useful to hold onto when that candidate later claims moral high ground, like Obama absolutely lives to do. You see, it’s not he who is toxic and hateful, but you, his lowly subjects, always disappointing him.
A better class of gaffes are the ones that reinforce a negative image from which the candidate already suffers. A clammy, sweaty Richard Nixon in the 1960 debate against JFK, for example. That was great. The man had the dourest face and already looked like an ogre in comparison to JFK’s sunny, handsome visage. The sweat just put it over the top. But I confess to admiring his refusal to wear makeup like some effete dandy. He was a man’s man dammit.
Michael Dukakis, trying to look butch in a tank, completely backfired. He looked like Darth Helmet. He ended up looking less manly and tough than had he just left well enough alone and reinforced the image that he was soft on everything.
George HW Bush, four years later, did himself no favors by looking at his watch during a debate in 1992. He was already perceived to be out of touch and the watch glance sealed that perception. But I can’t say I blame him. I’d be dying to get out of there, too.
My favorite of these episodes was Al Gore huffing and posturing on stage with George W. Bush during their first debate. He kept letting out deep, audible sighs like an exasperated high schooler, fed up with mom and dad’s rules. As if at any point, a plaintive whine “Moooooommmm” was going to come out.
Al Gore the boor. He’s a perfect mix between the obsequiousness and haughty imperiousness of Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice and the toady sidekick bullying of Grover Dill, with a soupçon of Tracy Flick teacher’s pet earnestness. It’s even funnier when I think about Gore subsequently getting busted for getting his chakra released (IYKWIM) at that massage parlor. But also, ew.
My favorite gaffes are the totally relatable ones. Howard Dean in the 2004 Democratic primary was a dark horse who eventually looked like he was in the lead, heading into Iowa. It didn’t go so well. He ended up in third. Attempting to rally his troops on stage that night, he started yelling about the states they were about to conquer and then let out a bizarre scream “YAAAARGH”. My god, the schadenfreude at watching that. Dean is an arrogant jackass. And yet, who among us has not attempted a blast of copium after getting our asses handed to us? Relatable. Nemesis, following hubris, holds back for no man. Some of us learn. Dean, however, continued for many years after to act like a cocky jerk, same as he ever was. Thankfully, he’s mostly out of the public eye now.
My favorite gaffe is from one of the least consequential candidates of all. In 1992, Ross Perot ran a third-party candidacy against old man Bush and Bill Clinton. His running mate was Vice Admiral James Stockdale. Stockdale was a legitimate war hero, but he was ill-suited to be a candidate. During the Vice-Presidential debate in 1992 against Gore and Dan Quayle, the first words out of his mouth were “Who am I? Why am I here?” He meant to use those to introduce himself, but it came out like a cantankerous old uncle someone dragged to a wedding against his will then shoved a video camera in his face to say something to the bride and groom. And really, who could blame him? I, too, would be asking myself that same question were I Ross Perot’s running mate. I loved that old grouch. I wish more candidates had that level of self-awareness and humility.
Alas, we’re stuck in this hell of puffed up, incompetent boobs, each campaign having less substance than the last, in a never-ending downward spiral to vapid singularity. Might as well point and laugh on the way down.
You can find Boo on Twitter at @izabooboo. She's surly and swears a lot, but rest assured she probably finds you annoying.
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