For all their lauded political acumen, the Clintons have a nasty habit of getting tripped up by their own anatomy. For Bill, it’s his roving, er, eye; for Hillary, it’s her mouth. This time she caused a stir by making a comment that was widely interpreted to mean that she’s staying in the presidential race because Barack Obama might get assassinated: “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.” Kennedy was in fact still campaigning for the nomination when he was assassinated in June 1968, yet her ill-considered remarks were picked up by Obama’s perennially thin-skinned campaign and by the media, which roundly scolded Clinton. While she may have been taken out of context, she should have known better than to bring up Kennedy’s name in the manner that she did. “I was deeply dismayed and disturbed that my comment would be construed in a way that flies in the face of everything I stand for—and everything I am fighting for in this election,” she whined. In at least one respect, there really can be no comparison between this year’s cycle and those of ‘68 or ‘92, because those presidential contests did not start a year-and-a-half early.

Both John McCain and Barack Obama campaigned in New Mexico on Memorial Day, but only McCain could speak to veterans with the sincerity of a life spent honorably in military service as part of a long-standing military tradition. Obama had to lie about the military service of his relatives, or maybe he just got his facts screwed up, in which case he has shamed the memory of his great-uncle. Obama claimed that his uncle was among the troops who liberated Auschwitz in 1945. His handlers corrected the record afterward; Obama was making reference to his great-uncle Charlie Payne. Now I have always believed that Obama was a closet communist, but is it really possible that his great-uncle served in the Red Army? It was the Soviets who liberated Auschwitz, not the Americans. It turns out that Payne was part of an American regiment that liberated the Buchenwald labor camp, an action no less heroic or humanitarian. And did Louis Farrakhan know that Barack’s great-uncle was liberating Jews prior to endorsing the Illinois senator? In all seriousness, Payne deserves our respect for his service, and he deserves more respect than his great-nephew has given him. Obama was simply careless in his attempt to connect with a military tradition for which he has no respect or understanding.

Obama’s second gaffe occurred when the freshman senator waxed eloquent about those who have served our country, saying, “On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes—and I see many of them in the audience here today—our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.” He saw fallen heroes in the audience? Does Barack understand what Memorial Day means? And if they were dead, are they registered to vote in Chicago?