News

Foot in mouth disease: Cassidy edition

by Walter Pierce

Despite ubiquitous cellphone cameras and Twitter accounts, politicians still make regrettable off-the-cuff remarks that find their way into hostile videos and campaign ads.

WASHINGTON (AP) - You might think this year's candidates had learned from Barack Obama's comments about bitter people who "cling to guns or religion." Or perhaps from Mitt Romney's apparent dismissal of the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes.

But despite ubiquitous cellphone cameras and Twitter accounts, politicians still make regrettable off-the-cuff remarks that find their way into hostile videos and campaign ads. The latest examples come from tightly contested Senate races, where a candidate's every sentence - uttered in public or in supposedly private meetings - is parsed for possible gaffes.

In Louisiana, Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy is counter-punching Democrats who selectively excerpted his remarks about uninsured people, some of whom, he said, are "relatively less sophisticated" or, perhaps, "illiterate."

People certainly can debate the severity of the remarks themselves, and the fairness of attacks built around them. But there's no stopping the comments from showing up in barbed video snippets, which nearly always omit the larger context and possible mitigating circumstances surrounding them.

The old saying in politics is, "If you're explaining, you're losing." Both parties jump on opponents' recorded missteps - real or perceived - and delight in watching the targets try to explain their way out.

Republicans say Democrats are irresponsibly contorting comments Cassidy made at a recent oil industry meeting. Cassidy hopes to oust three-term Sen. Mary Landrieu this fall.

Cassidy, a physician, discussed why some people go without health insurance. He said it's unreasonable to think everyone can negotiate complicated forms and instructions involved in the president's health care law.

Some workers, Cassidy said, turn down free, employer-provided health insurance because the paperwork is too daunting. He said that is "the reality of who the uninsured are: relatively less sophisticated, less comfortable with forms, less educated."

In some cases, Cassidy said, "those are my patients. They're illiterate."

"I say that in compassion," he continued. "They cannot read. The idea they're going to go on the Internet and work through a 16-page document to put in their data and sign up" is unrealistic.

A Louisiana Democratic group sent emails saying, "Bill Cassidy arrogantly insults uninsured" and says low-income Louisianians lack health insurance "because they're illiterate,' less sophisticated.'"

Cassidy replied in a statement Thursday, "It is self-evident to anyone who has worked with the uninsured, as I have for decades, that the uninsured come from all segments of society," including "the more and the less educated."