Do You Know a Gaffe When You See One?

Michael Dukakis in a tank was a gaffe. Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are just warming up.

Lyndon Johnson showed off his surgical scar after a double operation to remove his gallbladder and a kidney stone. “I got two operations for the price of one,” said Johnson. “[Dr. George] Hallenbeck went in there and messed around for a couple of hours and then stepped aside and let the other fellow in. There were footprints everywhere that hand went and I can still feel it.” The picture became an iconic representation of the president’s earthiness—along with the barbecue cookouts for dignitaries. For his critics, it became a symbol of how Johnson was coarsening the presidency.

Related Article: How To Measure for a President
Charles Tasnadi/AP Images.
Richard Nixon tried to soften his image by letting photographers capture him taking a stroll down the beach. He wanted to look like John F. Kennedy, but the wingtip shoes gave the opposite impression. Nixon wasn’t a man at home in any situation, but someone trying too hard to fit in.
Robert L. Knudsen/Richard Nixon Library.
Gerald Ford was a college football player and a good athlete, but this one slip-up became a running joke for a bumbling presidency. Chevy Chase performed flamboyant falls on Saturday Night Live, making Ford the show’s first presidential victim. The joke was that Vice President Nelson Rockefeller was just one banana peel away from the presidency.
Imagno/Getty Images.
At a campaign stop for Sen. Bob Dole in 1976, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller was heckled by protesters who disagreed with the administration’s Vietnam policy. They gave him the single finger salute. He returned the love.
Betteman/Corbis.
During a trip home to Plains, Ga., President Jimmy Carter wanted to relax. While out in his boat, a mysterious swimming rabbit approached him, and Carter warded it off with a paddle. The story made the front page of the Washington Post and a cartoon based on the Jaws movie poster showed a “killer rabbit” attacking the helpless president under the word PAWS. The story quickly became a metaphor for Carter’s troubled presidency.
AP.
Usually candidate blunders caught on film merely haunt candidates. This one helped run Sen. Gary Hart out of the race. The Colorado senator was the front-runner in the 1988 Democratic primary until the Miami Herald reported that the married Hart had spent the night with an attractive young model named Donna Rice. Hart initially challenged reporters to follow him, insisting that he led a boring life. Bad idea. Reporters soon found plenty. At a press conference, a Washington Post reporter asked Hart, "Have you ever committed adultery?" He refused to answer, but the answer was clear. This picture was taken from an overnight cruise the two had taken on the boat aptly named “Monkey Business.” (Read Hart’s shirt.) Hart soon withdrew from the race.
National Enquirer/Getty Images.
There has been perhaps no greater photo-op gone awry than this one from 1988 of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis riding in an M1 Abrams tank. Like Nixon’s stroll on the beach, this image—interpreted as an effort to combat criticism that Dukakis would be soft on national defense—backfired. It has become synonymous with inauthentic campaign stunts.
Steve Liss/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images.
In 1992, President George Bush had his own made-for-the-cameras moment blow up on him. Attending the National Grocers Convention, the 41^st president appeared fascinated by the revolutionary technology of the supermarket checkout-counter scanner, something regular Americans had long grown accustomed to have ring up their bill. Reporting at the time suggested that the president was amazed that such a thing existed, though Bush was merely asking questions. It became a metaphor for his disconnect from voters and their economic reality.
Dirck Halstead/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images.
In 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle presided over a spelling bee for sixth-grade New Jersey students. When 12-year-old William Figueroa spelled “potato” on the blackboard, the vice president corrected him, suggesting that he add an “e” on the end of the word. Figueroa rendered the final verdict when asked about the event, saying it "showed that the rumors about the vice president are true – that he's an idiot."
Courtesy YouTube.
When George Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln in a S-3B Viking wearing a full flight suit, it was supposed to be a triumphant turning point for his invasion of Iraq. The "Mission Accomplished" banner that hung behind him quickly became a symbol of hubris and poor planning. Iraq soon erupted into bloody fighting and American forces faced a costly insurgency.
Stephen Jaffe/AFP/Getty Images.
On the night Howard Dean lost the 2004 Iowa caucus, he took to the stage to vow that he would fight on. His army of liberals and young voters had not delivered the evening for him and he appeared to be trying to single-handedly revive his campaign through his energy—and his scream. “Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we're going to California and Texas and New York,” he yelled, with ample gesticulation. “And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan, and then we're going to Washington, D.C., to take back the White House! Yeah!” Dean had been trying to scream over the crowd, but to the television audience he was the only one audible. The build-up, punctuated by the “Yeah!”—which cracked as he yelled—made the entire moment look, as Dean would later concede, like a “crazy, red-faced rant.”
Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.
There was no larger campaign significance to this image of John Kerry on a tour of NASA’s shuttle Discovery except that it made him look like a he was wearing a human condom. He was the first presidential candidate to do that.
NASA/Getty Images.
Sen. Barack Obama dressed as a Somali elder during a 2006 visit to a rural area in northeastern Kenya. When pictures of the visit were posted on the Drudge Report during the 2008 Democratic primary, Obama, his campaign manager, and future United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice claimed it was a deliberate effort by Hillary Clinton’s allies to make voters think he was a Muslim.

Related Article: How To Measure for a President
Anonymous/AP.

This presidential campaign has been consumed with gaffes—some real, some make-believe—and it’s entering the final stretch. So we thought we’d offer both a public service and a guilty pleasure. The service we’re hoping to provide is a way to categorize all of the eruptions between now and Election Day, which is why we’re launching the 2012 Campaign Decoder. Consider it your one-stop destination for sorting the gaffes, antics, and false controversies of the day from the stuff that actually matters. When one of these eruptions occurs, we will offer our quick take to help you recognize whether an event is meaningful or just another piece of political junk food. You can spend your new free time studying the issues or thinking about how we might pick our presidents in a better way.

The guilty pleasure is a slideshow of some of the best presidential campaign gaffes ever caught on film. Some of these dogged presidents, others doomed their campaigns. It’s an amusing trip down memory lane, but also a helpful reminder of what a real gaffe looks like. When you’re photographed with your mistress on your lap, that’s a campaign-changing event. All of this hullabaloo over out-of-context quotes is really not the real thing.

Click here to view the 2012 Campaign Decoder.

Click here to view the slideshow of famous presidential gaffes.