Weigel

Typos Happen to Obama Too

President Obama and his staff are not infallible spellers, either.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Mitt Romney’s campaign has gotten more flak today for spelling issues. The campaign’s latest flub—misspelling GOP demigod Ronald Reagan’s last name as “Regan” in a slideshow for donors—is possibly the most embarrassing yet.

Just last week, Mitt Romney’s official iPhone app misspelled “America” as “Amercia,” then a video posted on Romney’s Facebook page misspelled “sneak-peek” as “sneak-peak.” On Monday, another Facebook error was spotted, a link that said supporters could buy “offical” campaign gear.

But President Obama and his staff are not infallible spellers, either. The @whitehouse twitter feed misspelled “Libya” as “Lybia” in February 2011, an error not widely reported by the media. And in 2010, President Obama misspelled “Syracuse” as “Sycacuse” while filling out his NCAA Tournament bracket on ESPN (see 2:50 mark), another incident not widely reported in the media.

Also, in his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father, Obama misspelled rebel slave Denmark Vesey’s last name as “Vescey” and misspelled anti-colonist Frantz Fanon’s first name as “Franz”.

While the Romney camp’s latest blunders are fun to poke fun at because of the central importance of Reagan and America to Republicans everywhere, at most they show the campaign is run by fallible humans like everyone else. In fact, they might reveal more about the lack of coverage of similar mistakes by Obama and his staff.