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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Gaffes make GOP look goofy

From Palin to Perry, mistakes abound

By: Lee-Anne Goodman

Posted: 10/14/2011 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

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Rick Perry is a politician, not a history expert. Obviously. (TRIBUNE MEDIA MCT)

WASHINGTON -- It's enough to make a grown American history teacher cry.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is the latest high-profile Republican candidate to display a flimsy grasp of U.S. history in remarks he made in a presidential debate this week when he suggested Americans fought the Revolutionary War against the British in the 1500s.

His remarks have not only prompted a gleeful meme on Twitter as so-called tweeps use the hashtag perryhistory to ridicule the governor's take on history, but they've also renewed accusations that the conservative movement is peppered with .... well .... nitwits.

"Putting it bluntly: Rick Perry is not stupid," the Austin Chronicle wrote in a damning defence of the governor following the debate.

"But he does seem to lack the kind of intellectual curiousity and agility that running outside of the convivial atmosphere of Texas politics requires."

America's political stage has long been populated by some apparent knuckleheads, from former vice president Dan Quayle -- the Sarah Palin of his day, perhaps best remembered for misspelling the word 'potato' -- to the late Democratic congressman, Sidney Yates, who once asked Hispanic high school students: "Do you own sombreros? Do you know the Mexican hat dance?"

But the current field of Republicans eyeing the party's presidential nomination have caused some consternation among historians and pundits, who fear America's famous strain of populism and anti-intellectualism could be shifting into overdrive.

"I feel the blood being drawn out of my body when I hear our precious history being so badly butchered by candidates who want to be the leader of our great nation," Allan Lichtman, a history professor of the University of Maryland, said in an interview Thursday.

"If you don't know your history, how in the world can you expect to guide the country into the future?" he asked. "These are the very people that tout their Americanism, and their fidelity to our heritage, and yet they don't know anything about our heritage."

Lichtman aims particular scorn at Michele Bachmann, who landed herself in hot water earlier this year when she suggested the country's Founding Fathers toiled tirelessly to abolish slavery.

In fact, slavery wasn't outlawed until almost a century after the Declaration of Independence was signed -- an event that took place amid the Revolutionary War, fought not in the 1500s, but from 1775 to 1783.

"How can someone not know that?" Lichtman asked.

Sarah Palin, meantime, got her Paul Revere history wrong, suggesting in infamous remarks earlier this year that the Revolutionary War hero made his legendary midnight ride to warn the British, not the Americans, that the enemy was approaching.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 14, 2011 A24

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