[President]-isms

This week, during the presidential debate, Mitt Romney delivered a classic. Responding to a question on pay equality for women, Romney said that while assembling his cabinet after being elected governor in Massachusetts, he was not pleased to see that his staff only sent him male applicants. He then proceeded to talk about his response. "I went to a number of women's groups and said, 'Can you help us find folks,' and they brought us whole binders full of women." This binder must have been pretty cramped. 

Romney's gaffe inspired me to search for some occasions in which other U.S. officials have misspoken.

Ronald Reagan on his recent trip: "Well, I learned a lot....I went down to (Latin America) to find out from them and (learn) their views. You'd be surprised. They're all individual countries."

Here's a map of Latin America:

Latin America includes Mexico and all of South America

As I'm guessing you can see, there are multiple countries in this image. What amazes me is that it took Reagan a trip to Latin America to figure that out. And we can't forget that this president was best-known for his foreign policy. I wonder if he thought he was ending a Cold War with all of Asia. 

Here's another one from Mr. Reagan: "Trees cause more pollution than automobiles."

I was going to just let this one speak for itself, but then I found this image describing Reagan's claim:

This tree is breathing out CO2

 
Here's a quote from Joe Biden, which, at first glance, may not seem too bad. He was introducing Missouri state Senator Chuck Graham: "Stand up, Chuck, let 'em see ya."

The only problem with this is that Graham happens to be in a wheelchair. I will give some props to Biden, however, as he did manage to recover from his blunder and give the man a warm welcoming. Take a look:


Just a little slip up from Joe Biden, nothing too bad. Still, it's quite funny: "The next President of the United States — Barack America!" It's a lot funnier of video:

Last up, one of the best gaffers of all time, Mr. George W. Bush. I'm going to pick a couple of my favorite from a long line of Bushisms.

On the topic of teaching to a test, Mr. Bush goes off, but unfortunately for him, what looked to be his most powerful line, turned out to be a topic of jokes for years to come: "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test."

Clearly having good grammar isn't a requirement to pass literacy tests. Here's a short video compilation of Bush on education (this quote is included):

 
Here's another Bush quote and it's a doozy: "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."

I want to say he was trying to refer "love" to the profession, but, well... it came out all wrong.