It's tough being a politician. The tape recorders always seem to be on, catching the kinds of gaffes, flubs and misstatements that the rest of us less-than-perfect orators -- blessedly free of these relentless electronic Boswells -- can far more easily laugh off.
Whole Web sites, whole books have been devoted to the verbal mishaps of folks like former Vice President Dan Quayle, who once managed to transpose the well-known advertising slogan of the United Negro College Fund into: "What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."
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But that doesn't seem to be what's going on this month with the former standard bearers of the Democratic Party.
Addressing an economic conference in the Qatari capital of Doha, former President Bill Clinton on Jan. 30 called the cartoon depictions of Muhammad published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last fall "totally outrageous cartoons against Islam," comparing them to anti-Semitic depictions of Jews.
In fact, the cartoons are pretty tame stuff -- the Islamic prophet is not shown as dirty, drooling, shaped like an animal or engaged in any unsavory acts, all standard for cartoon depictions of Jews in the modern Arab press.
Mr. Clinton is entitled to his opinion, of course, though one wonders why he would want to gin up more hostility toward the West with an inflammatory characterization of drawings his audience might not yet have been able to view for themselves.
But if Mr. Clinton's description was merely excessive, the remarks of former Vice President (and former Democratic presidential nominee) Al Gore to the Jiddah Economic Forum on Sunday go far beyond any mere verbal stumbling or understandable desire to ingratiate himself with his hosts.
Mr. Gore told a mainly Saudi audience Sunday that the U.S. government committed "terrible abuses" against Arabs after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Gore said Arabs in the United States have been "indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa or not having a green card in proper order, and held in conditions that were just unforgivable."
This goes beyond being politically unwise. It is bizarre.
In an Arab world where torture, beheadings and the cutting off of hands are considered normal sanctions not just for real felonies but also for "heresy" and other thought crimes, what on earth must Mr. Gore's listeners have imagined he meant by "terrible abuses"? What must an audience familiar with prison conditions in Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia picture when Mr. Gore speaks of "unforgivable" conditions?
One doubts they were picturing a warm dry cot, indoor plumbing and three square meals a day while an illegal immigrant who had knowingly outstayed his visa waited for a scheduled court hearing.
In the excess of caution following Sept. 11, were a few American residents of Arab extraction interrogated or even picked up and held incommunicado? Yes. Is it acceptable to criticize such abuses? Of course. Go to it.
But Al Gore clearly has a problem. The son of a famous father, Mr. Gore is "deeply insecure about his ability, stature and credentials," political consultant Dick Morris wrote in the New York Post during the 2000 campaign, in an essay headlined "Why Gore lies."
"He feels that he needs to go the extra mile to burnish his image even if he has to make things up," wrote Mr. Morris -- himself no paragon of rectitude, let us hasten to add.
But perhaps it takes one to know one.
Those in foreign lands may not realize Al Gore is merely one of our more excitable peddlers of tall tales. (Remember how he invented the Internet?) What on earth might happen if they believe him?
Thank goodness no one ever placed this man in a position where the fate of nations might have hung on his word.
