In honor of the 35th anniversary of The Trickster's denial that he was a crook, Time magazine published a Top Ten List. The list contains the dumbest things ever said by national leaders over the past 35 years. Click this link to see Time's "Top 10 Everything In 2008." If this is a (fair & balanced) ranking obsession, so be it.
[x Time]
Top Ten Most Unfortunate Political One-Liners
"I am not a crook."
On November 17, 1973, President Richard Nixon infamously denied any involvement in the Watergate scandal with his now timeless defense. Thing is, he was.
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
With those words, President Bill Clinton didn't just dig himself a hole, he stole a backhoe, dug a really deep hole, drove the backhoe into the hole, wired the backhoe with explosives and blew it up. Strenuously denying his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky at a January press conference, Clinton was later impeached by the House of Representatives for lying about the matter under oath.
"Read my lips: no new taxes."
That pledge was the centerpiece of George H.W. Bush's acceptance address, written by speechwriter Peggy Noonan, for his party's nomination at the 1988 Republican National Convention. It was a strong, decisive, bold statement, and you don't need a history degree to see where this is going. As presidents sometimes must, Bush raised taxes. His words were used against him by then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton in a devastating attack ad during the 1992 presidential campaign.
"The fundamentals of the economy are strong."
Senator John McCain was probably trying to be reassuring, as Presidents ought to be in times of turmoil and stress. Yet, when investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy hours after he made this statement during the 2008 campaign, McCain looked shockingly out of touch. His opponent, Barack Obama, wasted no opportunity to repeat McCain's statement, a particularly effective attack as the economy went further and further south.
"I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times."
The decision to do an interview with Playboy magazine was possibly not the best call of President Jimmy Carter's tenure. Yet, it was all going pretty well until he started talking about the Bible and adultery. Now, Carter's not actually admitting anything shocking. Most men would probably say, "Yep, been there." But presidents rarely (and for good reason) venture into the land of "too much information": Ideally, they should exist on a higher plane than the rest of us. It was an uncomfortable moment for America.
"It's vile. It's more sad than anything else, to see someone with such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual addiction."
This quote is more ironic than a whole double-CD album of Alanis Morrissette songs. Republican Representative Mark Foley (R-FL), having uttered this gem at the height of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, was brought down by an addiction to sexually explicit text messages to male congressional pages. It's like rain on your wedding day.
"We still seek no wider war."
President Lyndon Johnson announced to the nation after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964 that the U.S. would not rise to the bait after what was considered a provocative attack from Hanoi. While the American government claimed that North Vietnamese warships had attacked U.S. vessels in the Gulf, it later turned out to be the opposite. The Vietnam escalation followed shortly thereafter.
"That depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."
The lowest point in President Bill Clinton's public life, the September 1998 release of the Ken Starr report also provided what might have been the lowest and most desperate of legal defenses: Clinton reached new depths of word-parsing during his videotaped August 17 testimony in front of a grand jury. Until then, America hadn't been sure there was more than one definition of "is." Just to be clear, there isn't.
"The fundamental business of the country, that is, production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis."
Thus declared President Herbert Hoover on October 25, 1929. Sound familiar? Four days later, the stock market crashed, depression followed and Hoover became a joke. And yet all of this seemed to have been news to John McCain in 2008.
"You know, I always wondered about that taping equipment but I'm damn glad we have it, aren't you?"
President Richard Nixon actually said this to Watergate co-conspirator H.R. (Bob) Haldeman in April 1973, weeks before the U.S. Senate began its nationally televised Watergate hearings.... Ω
Copyright © 2008 Time, Inc.
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