A political gaffe is an error in speech made by a politician. [1]
According to Barack Obama it is:
used by the press to describe any maladroit phrase by a candidate that reveals ignorance, carelessness, fuzzy thinking, insensitivity, malice, boorishness, falsehood, or hypocrisy – or is simply deemed to veer sufficiently far from the conventional wisdom to make said candidate vulnerable to attack. [2]
A Kinsley gaffe occurs when a political gaffe reveals some truth that a politician did not intend to admit. [3] [4] The term comes from journalist Michael Kinsley, who said, "A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say." [5] [6]
The term political gaffe may be used to describe an inadvertent statement made by a politician, who believes the statement to be true, while having not fully analyzed the consequences of publicly stating it. Another definition is a statement made when the politician privately believes it to be true, realizes the dire consequences of saying it, and yet inadvertently utters it in public. [7] Another definition is a politician's statement of what is on their mind—this may or may not be inadvertent—thereby leading to a ritualized "gaffe dance" between candidates. While exhibiting umbrage or shock, and playing on the mistake, the ostensibly offended candidate must not exhibit anything resembling glee. [8] [9] A propensity to concentrate on so-called "gaffes" in campaigns has been criticized as a journalistic device that can lead to distraction from real issues. [upper-alpha 1] The Kinsley gaffe is said to be a species of the general "political gaffe." [10]
Kinsley himself posed the question: "Why should something a politician says by accident automatically be taken as a better sign of his or her real thinking than something he or she says on purpose?" [9]
Steven Pinker has contended that politicians use vague and indirect language to avoid making concrete statements, and that lazy journalists base political coverage around "gaffe spotting" rather than analysis of political platforms. [11]
The rise of Internet activism has created a new generation of negative campaigning where a political campaign can create attack ads within an hour of a politician making a gaffe. [12] [13]
Michael Hugh Meacher was a British politician who served as a government minister under Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and Tony Blair. A member of the Labour Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for Oldham West and Royton, previously Oldham West, from 1970 until his death in 2015.
Michael E. Kinsley is an American political journalist and commentator. Primarily active in print media as both a writer and editor, he also became known to television audiences as a co-host on Crossfire.
Randall Allen Terry is an American activist and political candidate. Terry founded the anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue. Beginning in 1987, the group became particularly prominent for blockading the entrances to abortion clinics; Terry led the group until 1991. He has been arrested more than 40 times, including for violating a no-trespass order from the University of Notre Dame in order to protest against a visit by President Barack Obama.
Nonpartisanism is a lack of affiliation with, and a lack of bias towards, a political party.
Jonathan Chait is an American pundit and writer for New York magazine. He was previously a senior editor at The New Republic and an assistant editor of The American Prospect. He writes a periodic column in the Los Angeles Times.
Political Wire is an American political blog. It was founded in 1999 and published by Taegan Goddard, a former policy adviser to Democratic U.S. Senator Donald Riegle and Independent Governor Lowell Weicker, and the co-author of the 1998 political management book You Won: Now What? How Americans Can Make Democracy Work from City Hall to the White House with political commentator Chris Riback.
The term swiftboating is a pejorative American neologism used to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. The term is derived from the name of the organization "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" because of their widely publicized—and later discredited—political smear campaign against 2004 U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry. Since the 2004 election, the term has come to commonly refer to a political attack that is dishonest, personal, and unfair.
Walter Rutherford Peterson Jr. was an American realtor, educator, and Republican politician from Peterborough, New Hampshire, who served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives and two terms as the 72nd governor of New Hampshire from 1969 to 1973.
Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. Truthiness can range from ignorant assertions of falsehoods to deliberate duplicity or propaganda intended to sway opinions.
Alex Pareene is an American journalist, writer, and editor. He was the editor-in-chief of the online news magazine Gawker. Pareene later served as a senior editor at Deadspin and editor-in-chief of Splinter News, before becoming a staff writer at The New Republic. As of 2022, he published a newsletter on Substack called "The AP Newsletter".
A half-truth is a deceptive statement that includes some element of truth. The statement might be partly true, the statement may be totally true, but only part of the whole truth, or it may use some deceptive element, such as improper punctuation, or double meaning, especially if the intent is to deceive, evade, blame or misrepresent the truth.
The word geek is a slang term originally used to describe eccentric or non-mainstream people; in current use, the word typically connotes an expert or enthusiast obsessed with a hobby or intellectual pursuit. In the past, it had a generally pejorative meaning of a "peculiar person, especially one who is perceived to be overly intellectual, unfashionable, boring, or socially awkward". In the 21st century, it was reclaimed and used by many people, especially members of some fandoms, as a positive term.
Debbie Schlussel is an American attorney, author, political commentator, movie critic, TV host, and blogger. She writes movie reviews and commentary focusing on pop culture, politics, Islamic terrorism, American Muslims, illegal immigration, news, and sports.
"Wingnut", wing nut or wing-nut, is a pejorative American political term referring to a person who holds extreme, and often irrational, political views.
James Kirchick is an American reporter, foreign correspondent, author, and columnist. He has been described as a conservative or neoconservative.
The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality is a bestselling book by Jerome Corsi opposing Barack Obama's candidacy for President of the United States. The book alleges Obama's "extreme leftism", "extensive connections with Islam and radical politics", "naïve... foreign policy", past drug use and connections to corrupt backers, among other things. The book has been criticized for containing factual errors, for being racist, and for being a political "attack book" containing smears, falsehoods, and innuendo.
"You didn't build that" is a phrase from a 2012 election campaign speech delivered by United States President Barack Obama on July 13, 2012, in Roanoke, Virginia. In the speech, Obama said: "Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that."
Double Down: Game Change 2012 is a book written by political journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin about the 2012 United States presidential election, in which Barack Obama was re-elected as President of the United States, defeating Mitt Romney. The book, published by Penguin Press, is a behind-the-scenes narrative of the Obama and Romney campaigns. It is the sequel to Game Change, which explored the 2008 United States presidential election. Double Down was released on November 5, 2013.
Post-truth politics, post-factual politics or post-reality politics, is a political culture in which facts are considered irrelevant. It suggests that the distinction between truth and falsity—as well as honesty and lying—have become a focal concern of public life, and are viewed by popular commentators and academic researchers alike as having a determinate role in how politics operates at particular points in history. It is regarded as especially being influenced by the arrival of new communication and media technologies. Popularized as a term in news media and a dictionary definition, post-truth has developed from a short-hand label for the abundance and influence of misleading or false political claims into a concept empirically studied and theorized by academic research. Oxford Dictionaries declared that its international word of the year in 2016 was "post-truth", citing a 20-fold increase in usage compared to 2015, and noted that it was commonly associated with the noun "post-truth politics".
"Alternative facts" was a phrase used by U.S. Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway during a Meet the Press interview on January 22, 2017, in which she defended White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's false statement about the attendance numbers of Donald Trump's inauguration as President of the United States. When pressed during the interview with Chuck Todd to explain why Spicer would "utter a provable falsehood", Conway stated that Spicer was giving "alternative facts". Todd responded, "Look, alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods."