The Screwups of Campaign '08

Presidential campaigns are so carefully stage-managed that few things are as entertaining as the mistakes politicians make on the trail. Throughout the 2008 race, check out TIME.com's ongoing chronicle of each candidate's gaffes, and then vote on just how big a screwup each one is

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Sept. 28, 2008

"When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

—Biden, citing the Great Depression during an interview with CBS' Evening News about the current economic crisis (the very same interview during which he trashed one of his own running mate's ads against McCain). Biden's statement, as the Daily Show's Jon Stewart pointed out, is incredibly wrong on not one, but two counts: Republican Herbert Hoover was in office when the stock market crashed in October 1929, and TV wasn't even introduced to the public until the 1939 World's Fair. A Biden spokesman later tried to turn the gaffe into gold, saying: "We Democrats aren't experts at Herbert Hoover depression economics like John McCain and his pals. From Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, we just get elected to clean up the economic mess these Republicans leave behind."

The Screw-Ups of Campaign '08: The Complete List

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