{"id":898,"date":"2012-10-11T14:20:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-11T14:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2012\/10\/11\/be-careful-of-embellishment"},"modified":"2012-10-11T14:20:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-11T14:20:00","slug":"be-careful-of-embellishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=898","title":{"rendered":"Be careful of embellishment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Tonight\u2019s vice-presidential debate between the incumbent, Democrat Joe Biden, the challenger, Republican Paul Ryan, is likely to produce some embellishment, a bit of braggadocio and maybe even some prevarication.<\/p>\n

The run-up to this encounter has included some interesting sound bites from previous VP debates. My all-time favorite, of course, has been the 1988 face-off between Democratic VP nominee Lloyd Bentsen of Texas and Republican nominee Dan Quayle of Indiana. Both men were serving in the U.S. Senate at the time.<\/p>\n

During the debate, which occurred in Danville, Ky. \u2013 where Biden and Ryan will square off tonight \u2013 Quayle sought to make a comparison between his congressional experience and that of a previous president, John F. Kennedy. He said that his experience matches up favorably with JFK\u2019s experience in the House and Senate before Kennedy\u2019s election in 1960.<\/p>\n

Bentsen pounced. He was waiting for Quayle\u2019s ill-advised comparison.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew Jack Kennedy,\u201d Bentsen said. \u201cI served with Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you\u2019re no Jack Kennedy.\u201d Bentsen brought the house down. It was a devastating blow to Quayle, who retorted that the remark was \u201cuncalled for, senator.\u201d Bentsen responded, \u201cBut you brought it up \u2026 senator.\u201d<\/p>\n

OK, but was Bentsen really as close to JFK as his snappy response suggested? No.<\/p>\n

Bentsen and Kennedy served together in the House for about five years; Kennedy left the House when he was elected senator from Massachusetts in 1952. Bentsen stayed in the House until 1955, and didn\u2019t return to Washington until 1971 after his election to the Senate, more than seven years after Kennedy\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

Bentsen and Kennedy were little more than casual acquaintances during their time together. They represented vastly different regions of the country: Kennedy hailed from New England, Bentsen represented South Texas. They both served during World War II, they both came from wealthy backgrounds.<\/p>\n

They weren\u2019t exactly pals. <\/p>\n

But hey, why let context get in the way of a good sound bite?<\/p>\n\n

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Tonight\u2019s vice-presidential debate between the incumbent, Democrat Joe Biden, the challenger, Republican Paul Ryan, is likely to produce some embellishment, a bit of braggadocio and maybe even some prevarication. The run-up to this encounter has included some interesting sound bites from previous VP debates. My all-time favorite, of course, has been the 1988 face-off between … Continue reading Be careful of embellishment<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}