In his continued quest to look like an everyday person and connect with others, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign again came up short.
With his recently launched Apple Inc. iPhone app called, WithMitt, it came with a glaring error. It misspelled “America.”
Before users find the misspelled word, the free app had to be downloaded (but first it does ask for ask for campaign contributions) and then the first screen proclaims: “I believe in Amercia.” No, that’s not my typo but the app’s. It does have an A-M-E-R-C-I-A spelling as opposed to the correct one of America.
According to a Yahoo! post by Mike Whener, social networks had a field day with the error as thousands of comments flew around Twitter and Facebook; yes, both Romney and Obama supporters had a good laugh.
The app had been launched on Tuesday and by Wednesday, it had been corrected. Maybe Romney is looking for bigger change than we expected, such as changing the spelling of America.
Regardless this is an embarrassment for the campaign as well as for Romney. Perhaps the Republican candidate is planning on not only changing how we feel about our nation, but also how we spell it. It brings to mind that Romney isn’t 110 percent hands on like we imagined and he has a staff member (or perhaps now ex-staff member) that failed to use spell check .
But as the Daily Beast points out, Romney isn’t the first politician to make a gaffe. Here’s the list of their top five.
- During the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley tried to defend the police in their force against demonstrators. He said: “The policeman is not here to create disorder. The policeman is here to preserve disorder.”
- During a 1992 campaign visit by Vice President Dan Quayle, he judged a spelling bee and corrected a 12-year-old boy, William Figueroa , in his spelling of “potato.” After the boy correctly said it, Quayle told the boy needed to “add one little bit on the end” and then sounded out the “e” for him.
- In a 2000 speech for the Republican primary in Florence, S.C., former president George W. Bush said: “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”
- In 2010, Sarah Palin added a new word to the English language with “refudiate.” In a tweet, Palin asked “Peaceful Muslims” to repudiate the efforts to build the so-called Ground Zero Mosque in Lower Manhattan. Instead, she spelled the word with the letter “f.”
- In 2011 Herman Cain was briefly a frontrunner for the Republican nomination. He was asked how he would deal with “gotcha questions,” including the naming of Uzbekistan’s president. Cain responded, “When they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, ‘You know, I don’t know. Do you know?’” He was supposedly being sarcastic.
