Haunting Moments
By Graham Davies

My two favourite moments of 2008 were presentational disasters. One was by Hilary Clinton. The other by Sarah Palin.

Hilary was lagging behind Obama, but fighting hard. It was possible that her toughness and sheer stamina would still win through.

Then came Snipergate: the story she told about stepping off a plane as First Lady in the face of Bosnian gunfire. Unforgiving video evidence told a completely contrary story. Grudgingly she admited that she "mis-spoke".

According to the Oxford Dictionary of Political Euphemisms, to “mis-speak” is “to lie deliberately”. Whichever way you care to put it, this blunder ensured that Obama would be the Democratic candidate.

A few months on and Sarah Palin turned up as God’s saving gift to the Republicans. Her convention speech had been Premier League Political Cabaret. She jolted the McCain campaign into a small lead.

Her crash from Republican Campaign Redeemer to Republican Campaign Wrecker was instant and irreversible. The first two questions of her first major TV interview as VP candidate established that (1) she’d never heard of the Bush Doctrine and (2) she couldn’t name a newspaper she regularly read.

This might be cool and well and good for your average apple-pie-cooking-cheer-leader-raising hockey-mom, but not for an apple-pie-cooking-cheer-leader-raising-hockey-mom with pretensions to Vice Presidential office.

It was a clanger which resounded round the world. From great white hope to great white dope in less than a minute. This collapse gave the final guarantee to an Obama victory, several weeks before Election Day.

Politicians in 2009 beware: presentational mistakes may take just a second, but on Youtube, they will haunt you for ever.

(Try this for size).