I’m not perfect. I make my share of mistakes. If I say something stupid in the presence of family or friends, I will be reminded of my faux pas in perpetuity. No, my blunders, usually minor and about mundane things like predicting the NY Mets would win the World Series last year, will not be on TV or get millions of viewers on YouTube. My boo-boos will be humbling reference points that my intimate circle will bring up in conversation, and we will all have a good laugh.
I have also misremembered dates and had fuzzy recollections of facts. It’s obvious that the longer you live, the more memories you have to store in your head. Sometimes I feel I have reached my storage capacity and am in overload mode. Accurately recalling dates, remembering the names that go with faces and sometimes just getting the facts straight can be difficult.
Before I go to a wedding or other family get together, I go through some old photo albums and refresh my memories. That works for me, but I’m not vying for the position of Commander-in-Chief of the world’s mightiest military and economic power.
Hillary Clinton’s memories of Bosnia had a little too much Indiana Jones to be considered non-fiction. Barack Obama claimed a Kennedy connection when he misstated that his father had come to the U.S. because of the generosity of the famous family. John McCain has had some senior moments, getting the basic facts wrong on a recent trip to the Middle East and being bailed out by his buddy, Joe Lieberman.
I am willing to overlook some oops and some slips; these candidates have been running on empty 24/7 and they’re only human. But we all have our limits. When patterns of problems appear and reappear, what is the point where we just can’t forgive and forget any longer?