Will Politicians Ever Learn

Recently Hillary was caught in a whopper of a lie about her visit to Bosnia during the Clinton administration. When will politicians learn that they can't get away with stuff like this any more. Since the advent of LexusNexis every statement ever made that appeared in print can be easily retrieved and compared to current statements. That alone should have corrected the tendency of many public figures to tailor their statements to the audience of that moment.

Even more recently, Barack Obama's arrogance was exposed when he spoke about "small town Pennsylvania" to a crowd in San Francisco. Obama said You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them, and it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Wow, so Obama sees hardworking folks in Pennsylvania as bitter losers who turn to religion or cling to their guns. If they dare to oppose illegal immigration it isn't that they want our laws enforced or our borders secured to keep us safe. No they're just angry that they haven't had a job for 25 years and are looking for someone to blame. Finally, since Sen. Obama is speaking out against NAFTA and opposes a trade agreement with Columbia who is he to claim that some Americans are anti-trade because they are bitter? Is this the way Obama plans to "unite" America?

Now with YouTube readily available to most Americans public figures will need to think twice before fabricating events or telling elites in San Francisco how little they respect rubes in another part of the country. Even average Americans are finding that more of their behavior is being filmed and saved for posterity whether they want it to be or not. With video cameras in every public place and in perhaps as much as twenty-five percent of cell phones there is no longer any safe place to act the fool.


In the case of our elected officials I like the idea of being able to see for myself what they said and being able to hold them responsible for their statements. It's a good deal more difficult to claim you were "misquoted" or taken out of context when we can see you as you made that statement.

In the case of private individuals I hope public behavior will improve with the knowledge that you too could have embarrassing behavior available for anyone in the world to view at their leisure. So, as my Grandmother used to say, "watch your P's & Q's".