Mika chalked it up to Mondays, and gosh knows I've had some rough ones myself. So we're happy to cut Mike Barnicle some slack. Even so, we can't help reporting how in the course of little more than a minute on Morning Joe today, Barnicle bumbled his way into two embarrassing blunders.
First, the former Globe columnist described Al Gore, Sr. [father of the illustrious Nobel Prize winner] as having represented Kentucky in the Senate. Moments later, discussing voter dissatisfaction with the status quo, Barnicle predicted a third-party presidential campaign, summing it up with "two words: Mike Blumenthal." In both cases, NBC political director Chuck Todd was there to gently guide Barnicle back, noting that Gore was from Tennessee and that Mike had Bloomberg, not Blumenthal, in mind.
Barnicle began by contrasting what he called the "clowns" currently running for Senate from Kentucky with the statesmen of the past.
MIKE BARNICLE: I was born an optimist, because of my background and my parents, I remain an optimist. But the politics of this country, over the last however-many years, is turning me into a pessimist. This is a country now with no institutional memory, with no attention span. We were watching a debate clip out of Kentucky, a state that used to be represented by John Sherman Cooper, Albert Gore, Sr., who lost his Senate seat --
CHUCK TODD: Tennessee, Tennessee.
BARNICLE: Tennessee, OK, next state.
TODD: Wendell Ford. Wendell Ford, you're thinking.
BARNICLE: But Al Gore, Sr. lost his seat over the war in Vietnam, and we saw these two clowns running for the United States Senate. And we see a country where people wake up every day just so pessimistic about what's going to happen at the end of the week, not the end of the decade. And I'm telling you, I got two words, Senator [Dem Claire McCaskill of MO], for the Democrats and the Republicans in what you refer to as the next cycle, not this year, 2012. Those two words are Mike Blumenthal. There's gonna be a third party in this country.
MIKA BREZINSKI: Mike --
TODD: Bloomberg.
BARNICLE: I'm tired.
BRZEZINSKI: I know. It's Monday. It's one of those Morning Joe Mondays.
Wikipedia: abbreviation of Microphone »
