We’ve heard a lot of press coverage focused on the gaffes offered up by Republican contenders at last Thursday’s debate in Orlando. But the worst gaffe of the week came earlier that same day from another contender in the 2012 race: Barack Obama.
Standing before a deteriorating bridge that connects Kentucky and Ohio (home states of House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell) Obama cited a litany of the great accomplishments of government infrastructure spending. He declared:
We used to have the best infrastructure in the world here in America. We’re the country that built the Intercontinental Railroad …
The Intercontinental Railroad? President Obama clearly believes government can do anything, but it still can’t build train tracks across an ocean. As Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times points out:
It’s yet another humorous gaffe by the Harvard graduate, overlooked by most media for whatever reason. Like Obama saying Abraham-Come-Lately Lincoln was the founder of the Republican Party. Or Navy corpseman. Or the Austrian language. Fifty-seven states. The president of Canada. Etc.
One can only imagine the field day the press would be having if Rick Perry or one of the Republican contenders had made the same remark.
An oblivious White House even highlighted the remark on its website story on the president’s speech.
Ah, so this is one of those, “like I been saying’” or “see, told ya so” sorts of blog posts. Yet another anecdote brought in to keep all who are in-the-know laughing smugly.
…By the way, does adding an “inter-” to “continental” really qualify as “the worst gaffe of the week?” Slow week, I’d say.
Cheers
Imagine the hip boomer generation media reaction if Dan Quayle, Ronald Reagan, or father or son George Bush saying such things.
Now, if he’d dived off the bridge, or at least pulled some mortar out of his pocket and started fixing the bricks, that would have been newsworthy. But this………..?
The funny thing is he may have been refering to the “Transcontitnental Railroad” but he still doesn’t get it right. Mostly Chinese and Indian slaves “Coolie” slaves built that railroad…(If he was refering to the Transcontinental)