Hillary's Misspeak.

Strange at it may seem for me to be defending Hillary, I really do think she was simply a victim of campaigning. Call it diarrhea of the mouth, brain fade, or simple exhaustion- what she said compares to the other instances where politicians on the campaign trail say things that are simply untrue. I don't think it is or was intentional on her part. The part of me that holds Hillary to indeed be insanely smart and insanely calculating tells me that I should be taking her statement as an outright lie, intentionally told, to serve one of her machinations that would place her in the White House. But the rest of my thought processes tell me that there is absolutely no machination plausible that would account for her having ever mad this statement.

It's much like Obama's "bitter" comment that was followed by examples of provincialism that results from such bitterness. Do people buy guns because they are bitter over their economic situation? Do people go to religious services because they are bitter about the economy? The man is suffering from campaign fatigue. Plain and simple. Given a couple of weeks of sleep he probably would never have phrased his comments the way that he did.

McCain confusing Sunni & Shia sects at least twice falls into the same category as well. Taking into account his Senate committee assignments, it is very doubtful that were it not for continued campaigning, he would not have made such a slip up.

Reagan, Ford, Carter, and even Bill Clinton had their gaffs as well during campaigns. The difference is that technology has so caught up with campaigning methods that almost an entire candidate's run gets digitally recorded. What gets said in New Hampshire is worldwide news for 24 hours. There are no private moments.

And as an example today you have video of Clinton doing a Crown Royal shot & Obama serving cheeseburgers in a restaurant. In a very real sense, the camera lens combined with digital signal streaming feeds makes it entirely possible to catch every single hiccup made by a candidate. At some point, normal mortals will break.

All three remaining candidates have broken. It's that simple. Would Clinton have said what she said if she wasn't a political zombie right now? Would Obama be caught on camera serving cheeseburgers to white people in a style that practically screams "House Slave" ever have happened were it not for the ghoulish campaign?

Honestly, while such gaffs are entertaining grift, what do they actually indicate about the candidates? In a word-nothing. They are instead concentrating on explaining away the gaffs, while real issues such as their plans for domestic and international policy get ignored by the camera. It is very telling that even though all the candidates have given policy speeches, the only ones that even get more than a few minutes of live media play have been Obama & Romney speaking on their own religion. McCain's speech on solar energy policy was only covered because he was expected to get an endorsement from Guilianni at the same speech. CNN & Fox started covering it, but when it became apparent that McCain wasn't planning on handling the endorsement until after his policy speech, both networks broke away.

It is a function of salaciousness, that our media has devolved its coverage down to such important questions as "Boxers, Briefs, or Freeball?". The current crop of candidates I think tried to earnestly put policy plans of multiple issues on the table. But, despite that attempt, we have instead gotten coverage of the exceptional. Such as Oprah hosting a campaign rally for Obama. Hillary "crying" in New Hampshire. And a few hundred more trivialities that really were never important campaign events or even being news worthy.