WASHINGTON — When the dust clears after election day, 2006 may be remembered as the year of the offhand remark.
In what he said was a joke gone awry about the Iraq war, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) this week became the second would-be presidential candidate -- after Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) -- to see his hopes dimmed because of a botched or unscripted comment. Appearing Monday at a Democratic rally in Pasadena, Kerry told college students that they needed to study hard and try to do well in school because "if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
As other Democratic candidates quickly shied away from appearances with Kerry, who as the party's 2004 presidential nominee emphasized his military service, he issued a written apology late Wednesday "to any service member, family member, or American who was offended."
Kerry's slip of the tongue joins Allen's "macaca" characterization of an opponent's dark-skinned campaign worker as a nationally infamous campaign lowlight, but similar loose-lip remarks have caused no end of trouble for lesser-known candidates.
Available via mouse click on websites like YouTube, magnified by 24-hour cable news networks and radio talk show hosts eager for controversy, foot-in-mouth syndrome has become the bane of candidates coast to coast:
* Steve Kagen, a Wisconsin Democrat running for the House of Representatives, arrived late to a campaign event after visiting an Indian reservation. "We're on Injun time," he explained. "They don't tell time by the clock." Local radio talk show hosts went ballistic. Kagen apologized.
* Banker Tramm Hudson, running in Florida's Republican primary for the House seat being vacated by GOP Senate candidate Katherine Harris, told a Christian Coalition political forum: "Blacks are not the greatest swimmers or may not even know to swim." Later he apologized, noting, "I said something stupid." He finished third.
* Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) accused Maryland's GOP Senate candidate, Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, of "a career of slavishly supporting the Republican Party." Steele, who is African American, took umbrage; conservative bloggers called the episode "Macaca: the Sequel"; and Hoyer -- the No. 2 Democrat in the House -- had to apologize.
In Washington, a gaffe has been defined as the trouble a politician gets into when he says what he's actually thinking. With some unexpectedly tight races this election season, and with many contests going down to the wire, overtaxed candidates are sometimes committing the sin of failing to stay on message.
