bridge

In the Los Angeles Times, Andrew Malcolm highlights another underreported gaffe by President Obama. During his recent quasi-campaign speech in support of his jobs bill, theatrically set next to a bridge on the Ohio-Kentucky border, Obama said, “We’re the country that built the Intercontinental Railroad.” Malcolm writes, “A railroad between continents? A railroad from, say, New York City all the way across the Atlantic to France? Now, THAT would be a bridge!” Malcolm adds, “It's yet another humorous gaffe by the Harvard graduate, overlooked by most media for whatever reason.”

During his recent speech to a joint-session of Congress, Obama got the term right, saying that President Lincoln “mobilized government to build the Transcontinental Railroad.” But Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, and others probably wouldn’t appreciate his claiming that the government built their railroad.