How To Misspeak A Lie

Paul Begala Likens Blumenthal Vietnam Fib To Condi Rice Calling Bush ‘My Husband’

by Frances Martel | 7:26 am, May 19th, 2010

Considering the “Randslide,” the departure of 30-year veteran Senator Arlen Specter, and the fact that Chris Matthews was waxing poetic about the primaries way past midnight, this was a pretty uneventful Election Day, gaffe-wise. The one radiant exception to this came from Anderson Cooper’s political team, where Democratic strategist Paul Begala took a thematic detour in explaining the rational behind Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s false record as a Vietnam War veteran.

Asked about the Blumenthal scandal and how politicians don’t “lie,” they “misspeak,” Begala weighed in as follows:

“Voters are going to have to sort through whether this is some sort of fundamental character flaw, right– which I think many might think– or whether this was a bizarre malaprop. You remember, in 2004, Condoleezza Rice called George W. Bush ‘my husband.’ Now that was really deeply creepy and weird, but, it was just weird, just one of those weird things–”

At this point, Cooper interrupts him to ask, in awe, how he managed to tie the Bush administration to Richard Blumenthal, at which the rest of the panel erupts in laughter. While this is by far the strangest thing Begala says in the segment, he does reference “my girlfriend Pamela Anderson” a few times and finally explains the Blumenthal team’s defense as “lots of other times, he told the truth”– which CNN analyst Alex Castellanos praises as “the best political slogan ever.”

The segment below: