Who's in charge here?

When the 2012 Presidential election is all said and done, it will be recorded in the history books as the Gaffe election.  Most of the news coverage on the Presidential candidates have been focused on their oratory mistakes.  This has been occuring for a long time, but has come sharply into focus after the Republican and Democratic conventions.  The Greateast Presidential Gaffes! Featuring classics such as, Obama's "you didn't build that"!  Romney's "the entitled 47%"!  Biden's "they is gonna put you back in chains"!  And Paul Ryan's "It would take me too long to go through all of the math"!  All this and more for the low low price of $9.99! Act now!

All of the candidates have been caught up in this gaffe-o-rama but why?  Because no one is asking the candidates the hard questions.  The majority of the talking points are coming from stump speeches.  Speeches where the candidates can say whatever they want and no one is allowed to ask questions later.  I know what you're gonna say, "hey buddy!  That quote from Paul Ryan about math being too difficult came from an interview he did with Chris Wallace"!  Yeah it was, but Chris Wallace works for Fox News and he didn't press the issue after Ryan said math is really tough.  That interview could have been lead by anyone and they would not have pressed him because they would get locked out from future interviews and reporters who only toss softballs would be allowed to give the interviews.  This has been one of the worst election cycles for getting candidates to candidly talk about the issues.  That's why we only get gaffe coverage.  It's the only thing news channels can report on.  All candidates are guilty of this because no one is really talking about policy.  So be it.  Let's make lemonade out of lemons. 

I'm done with my fair and balanced act, so let's pick on the Republicans.  The President's gaffe's (that sounds like a horrible porno film title) have been grammatical errors.  He says the wrong word or he forgets what part of his speech he is on.  Biden is a cartoon character at this stage and gets really animated when one of his speeches gets going.  This usually results in him saying something insensitive or weird.  You can make the argument that this is unbecoming of a President and Vice President, but keep in mind, these are grammatical missteps.  We all make them.  At my sixth grade spelling bee, I was given the word Extra and I spelled it out as E-X-T-A-R.  This was broadcast to the entire school and I had to change my name and switch schools, again.  The gaffes committed by the Republican candidates are fact based (or lack thereof) gaffes.

Ryan refuses to answer questions that are more difficult than how many situps do you do every morning, so, we have to talk about Mitt.  During the second Presidential debate,  Mitt continued to comment on how it took the President two weeks after the attack on our embassy in Libya before he would refer to it as an act of terror.  This resulted in an unintentionally funny moment when the moderator said he was wrong.  This week, Mitt has been on the defensive after claiming that Chrysler, who produces the Jeep line, is going to shut down Jeep productions in America and move them to China.  This was used as a stick to beat Obama's assertion that his actions saved the auto industry.  The CEO of Chrysler immediately spoke up and said this is just a flat out lie.  The original news report that started all of this actually stated, because of the increasing popularity of American cars in Asia, Chrysler is considering opening a seperate Jeep production plant to produce vehicles that are only going to be sold in China and Asia.  No shut downs in America.  Mitt, being the business man that he is, did not realize that part of a business model should be to get your product to as many people as economically possible. 

This brings up an important quesiton, who the f*** is running that campaign?!  After the first Presidential debate, the Romney camp stated they would not let fact checkers run their campaign but this is ridiculous.  Are the staffers and speech writers not doing basic research and why?  As controlling as Romney is, I cannot imaging him writing his own speeches and doing his own homework.  That's why you have a staff.  Remember, this is basic research and the reading of statements to ascertain meaning.  Romney is going on television, acting like someone asked him the square root of something, and then he says something crazy to make people forget what was just asked. This is the reason why he is the Republican nominee and not Jon Huntsman.  If the right people had been allowed to ask questions and grill them on their answers, then it would have been known from the start that he has no idea what he is talking about.  He has changed his stance on issues and how Republican he is so many times that if he is elected President, every time he makes a speech we are going to have to ask, who's in charge here?