Here's the best I found: "The last time I checked, the Constitution said, 'of the people, by the people and for the people.' That's what the Declaration of Independence says." That's it. I know that he quibbled with the definition of "is". But that's different. That's him purposely screwing with language to avoid admitting something. That's very different. The "of the people" quote shows that he was confused or ill-informed and he made himself look ridiculous. In other words, it made him look, for a moment, kinda dumb. Like Bush does quite often.
So I'm still looking.
But in searching for stupid Clinton quotes, I kept coming across this one: "We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans." Usually followed by something like, "That is SCARY!"
Yes, that sentence fragment, taken out of context, is pretty damn scary. Or at least unclear. Or at least... I suppose that it could, with further elaboration, come across as scary. I mean, the quote doesn't say, "We shouldn't preserve the rights of ordinary Americans." It says: "we can't be so fixated on our desire" to preserve some rights. Probably particular rights... Hmm...
This is what appears to be the more complete quote:
"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans to legitimately own handguns and rifles. I don't believe that everybody in America needs to be able to buy a semi-automatic or fully-automatic weapon, built only for the purpose of killing people, in order to protect the right of Americans to hunt and practice marksmanship and to be secure."
Now. Agree with that or not, you gotta admit, that is a much different statement.
You know, Bush made a crack about how some things would be easier if our country were a dictatorship. It'd be very easy to quote that and tack on "That is SCARY!" And I'm sure some people have. But that's just cynical political manipulation, like the mis-quote of Clinton. Whereas quoting Bush talking about being "misunderestimated" is just funny.
In all fairness, I've searched for a more complete "I believe what I believe is right" quote. Haven't found it yet. I'd like to read it in context.|||109184006197788646|||Presidential Quotes
Senor Cleenay|||buddy, of the people for the people by the people isnt from the dec of inc or the constitution, its from the gettysburg address...idiot Joe|||Did you read what I wrote? I said that Clinton looked dumb for misquoting. He got it wrong, not me.Pay attention to all the quotation marks.