Mitt Romney latest pol to join wait-let-me-explain club

WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney's remark that he's not worried about the very poor, the latest gaffe in a campaign rich with blunders, joins a long list of wait-let-me-explain episodes in presidential election history.

It's been a banner year for campaign misfires: Rick Perry had his "oops" moment when he forgot one of the three government departments he wanted to eliminate. Herman Cain only made things worse after he fumbled a question about Libya by explaining he had "all this stuff twirling around in my head." Michele Bachmann launched her campaign with a cringe-worthy misfire, declaring that both she and actor John Wayne had lived in Waterloo, Iowa, when it was actually serial killer John Wayne Gacy Jr. who'd lived there.

Will any of those sour notes still be ringing in the ears beyond November's ballots and confetti?

There's stiff competition in the pantheon of campaign misfires: Think of Howard Dean's primal scream in Iowa during the 2004 primary. Vice President Al Gore's overwrought sighs when debating George W. Bush in 2000. Vice President Dan Quayle's botched spelling of potato in 1992. And, way back at the dawn of televised presidential debates, Richard Nixon's profuse sweating on stage with cool-as-a-cucumber rival John Kennedy in 1960.

Some others with proven staying power:

THE OTHER ROMNEY. Mitt Romney knows only too well how devastating a single gaffe can be. Forty-five years ago, his father, George Romney, ended his presidential campaign after negative fallout from his answer to a question about why he he'd once supported the Vietnam War. In a 1967 TV interview, Romney referred back to his 1965 visit to the country and stated, "When I came back from Viet Nam, I'd just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get." He said he'd since done a lot more study of the matter and no longer believed the war was necessary.

Romney's poll numbers sank amid a swirl of ridicule and questions about whether he was naive. "Can't you just see him coming back from a conference with (Soviet official Alexei) Kosygin yelling that he had been brainwashed by a Russian?" Democratic Party Chairman John Bailey asked. Romney's wife, Lenore, allowed that her husband's words were "extremely unfortunate" and insisted that he was too strong a man to be brainwashed. But the damage had been done.