The Washington Post reports:
[Mitt Romney] also criticized people who choose not to get married because they enjoy the single life.
"It seems that Europe leads Americans in this way of thinking," Romney told the crowd of more than 5,000. "In France, for instance, I'm told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past."
If this quote is accurate and in context, then it does seem more than just a screw-up caused by being tired -- Romney went out of his way to say this, and must have had at least some opportunity to reflect on it and to realize that it bears a little more checking. So it seems to me this reflects worse on him than the 10,000-death-toll (an error in one number, and one that was apparently fairly promptly corrected) misstatement by Obama.
See also the Orson Scott Card connection, courtesy of Ana Marie Cox (Swampland @ Time).
Related Posts (on one page):
- OK, Now This Might Suggest a Lapse of Judgment Rather Than Just Being Tired:
- Tired:
Of course, it's not just the seven year thing that's silly. How was Europe in the past different? Henry VIII split from Rome so he could split from his wife, and that was among the nicer ways he moved on after his apparent term was up.
The societal mode of keeping young adults as children and not to encourage that they take up adult roles with marriage and children when they start to work for a living is bad for society and for the children that are a result of temporary liaisons. We have extended the adolescence of children up to the 30's. I do not see that as a positive accomplishment. I always have felt that people should try to reach as high as they can accomplish and to be self sufficient and willing to shoulder responsibility. To encourage sexual relationships without marriage and any resultant children as just collateral damage is wrong. Children should not be illegitimate and should have the security of two legally married parents which provides long term security
Complete non-event .... Will we see more of this sort of thing from Prof. Volokh as the election approaches?
The media vultures want to make stories out of trivial events. Too bad this website joins the flock.
EV - it gets even worse. One of Romney's flacks tried to spin this away by saying that he was referring to some form of civil partnerships or something - that didn't fact check either.
So what any of them says in substance (as opposed to the Obama misspeak) is fair game. However, I agree that it is going to be a long, grueling campaign season.
Interesting.
Romney didn't say marriage in France is like you get married for 7 years, divorced, and then remarried. He said that the law forces you to be married for only 7 years. After 7 years the law says you are no longer married and you have to find a new person to get married too. He is making this shit up, there is nothing like that in France. After creating a fictional strawman (which he said was real in France) he then said this is a horrible system.
He is making stuff up and attributing it to other countries.
He meant *besides* that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaca_(slur)
Humor is the kind of thing that can get lost when a speech goes to text (sarcasm, too). But the way Romney's reacting to this, I don't think so. Video would be dispositive here (unless he's got a really good deadpan delivery)
This stupid thing started because someone transcribed the Senator's made-up "mah cah cah" as "Macaca," then looked up that spelling, which describes the genus of macaque monkeys. Of course the genus "macaca" is almost certainly supposed to be pronounced "ma-cack-ah," which isn't what Allen said, either.
It's analogous to someone who speaks a foreign language referring to a person as "Procyon," then having someone say-- that describes raccoons, and in English "coon" is a racial slur. Next, someone adds "procyon" to Wikipedia and suddenly it's a racial slur...
You'll find out very fast whether it is considered a slur or not.
Once believing it, they will applaud anyone who is against it. The truth doesn't matter, it's what your position is on fictional matters that counts. That's why he didn't back down.
It's a crazy world we live in, and you're welcome to it.
Of course you're also taking the "welcome to America" bit out of context, too.
Once you get past the fact that the man can barely speak English, it's clear that Allen's "welcome to America and the real world of Virginia" was a jab at Webb as much as it was at Sidarth. Yeah, he was trying to exploit the fact that Webb's man looked like a foreigner. That's crude but it's not racist.
Putting aside the plausibility of Obama misspeaking, the video makes it seem like Obama geniunely believes 10,000 people died. "In case you missed it, 10,000 people died in Kansas. An entire town destroyed." A mistake of this magnitude is usually caught by the speaker, especially one noted for his speaking skills. Romney's mistake, in contrast, concerned a strange tidbit about the state of marriage in France.
The average voter is bound to forgive a candidate for a mistake about marriage policy in France. However, the average voter is going to think it's strange that a candidate noted for his oratory says 10,000 instead of 10 and doesn't catch his mistake. This would be forgivable if talking about, say, a disaster in India but not here in this country. American voters expect a candidate to know whether 10,000 Americans died in a disaster (or not). American voters don't particularly care if a candidate has all his facts straight about French marriage law.
Think of it in terms of potential value (or cost). Romney made a mistake, no doubt about it. But the penalty for that mistake levied by the voters will be small. Whether a candidate knows his facts about French marriage law just isn't important to most Americans. In stark contrast, the probability that Obama misspoke instead of being misinformed is to my mind greater than .50; yet the cost that he was genuinely clueless is infinitely higher. If he really was that misinformed he is not fit for the presidency. The idea that Obama could be so out of touch with what was going on that he really thought 10,000 people died is scary to most people. It is a small consolation that he probably misspoke. Taken in the context of the "Imus violence" stupidity in the wake of the Virginia shootings, leveraging another disaster for political advantage was unwise to say the least.
Does that mean I should not give you the benefit of the doubt and just call you a severely misinformed idiot?
Had you bothered to read Eugene's earlier posting (the one that he linked to above entitled "tired") you would see this quote "As he concluded his remarks a few minutes later, he appeared to realize his gaffe."
I won't go into the rest of "misinformed" analysis because it is obviously wrong.
American voters don't particularly care if a candidate has all his facts straight about French marriage law.
This is why Romney may have thought he could get away without factchecking his speech, but Obama could not possibly have intended to make such an obviously incorrect statement.
Obama says "oops"; Romney sends out a flack with more misinformation.
One key to judging character is seeing how a person deals with a mistake. Obama quickly corrected his.
Agreed. This was the real unfortunate part of his quote. It may well go down as his Dan Quayle/Murphy Brown moment.
Romney gave this written speech as a commencement speech at the Graduation event of Regent University (Pat Robertson's college). This wasn't a spur of the moment thing, this was a written speech. You don't make such speeches up at the spur of the moment.
He was wrong. His flunky tried to defend the comment that French marriages last for a maximum of seven years by pointing to civil unions (not marriages) that last a minimum (not maximum) of three months (not seven years). Other than those three details, he was right.
Not that this is that big a deal in my view. A lapse of judgement, sure. But surely an honest mistake. Every candidate is giving speeches and interviews on a daily basis; they're going to say some dumb things from time to time. In my view, the worst part was his spokesman's dishonest defense of the comment rather than simply acknowledging error.
Close call. The worst may have been not checking such an obviously implausible assertion.
There are a fair number of teachers commenting here. How would you grade a student who put something like that in a paper?
Response: Close call. The worst may have been not checking such an obviously implausible assertion.
I disagree. Failing to fact-check a speech is sloppy. Failing to admit a mistake is dishonest.
Back to Obama. If his opponents have to resort to attacks that are this weak, he must be doing something right. So please, keep attacking him over this.
I'm an undecided Democrat, and Obama just keeps looking better.
Fair point.
Though if the failure to fact-check was deliberate ("This is so good I'm not going to risk finding out it's false") then it too is dishonest, not just sloppy.
It would be nice if you could try to adhere to the comment policy. Yes, I actually did read that. But what Obama actually said doesn't strongly support the characterization that "as he concluded his remarks a few minutes later, he appeared to realize his gaffe." As the quoted article makes clear Obama did not correct his mistake, he merely alluded to some gaffe rather than provide a specific clarification. Obviously his staff probably made it clear he made a mistake (via slip of note or nudge and a whisper), and I think that's all his statement indicates, but I haven't seen the video in its entirety. And, again, my point is that people who misspeak so greatly usually catch themselves after hearing the mistake aloud. Finally, if you actually read what I wrote, I tend to agree that Eugene's explanation is more likely than not. I just think it's more likely than he does, for the reasons I outlined.
So Obama was supposed to argue with America that 10,000 people really did die? Quickly correcting his mistake was his only option, it's not a debateable point.
Are you implying, since his spokespeople refused to correct it, that Romney's statement about seven-year marriage maximums in Europe *is* a debatable point? If not, what point are you making here about the implications of these reactions on the character of the two men?
What the Washington Post quotes Romney as saying is not at all what you are having him say. He said that "...marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up."
He did not say that all French marriages are contracted in seven-year terms or that in such a seven-year marriage the parties must move on at the end of the term.
I mean, Mitt can make mistakes, but let's us not make additional mistakes in interpreting what Mitt's mistake said....