Here's the headline on an article in The Hill about purported Obama missteps: “Experts say Obama needs to watch the gaffes”

And here's the 18^th paragraph:

The presidential experts don't believe that Obama has been more gaffe-prone than his predecessors. “Most presidents make rookie mistakes because everything they say is going to be newsworthy, and even prominent individuals get surprised by that,” West said.

In between, The Hill lists various supposed Obama “gaffes” going back two years. Included among them: “saying that bailed-out businesses shouldn't be going to Las Vegas.” The Hill may consider that a “gaffe,” but I suspect few Americans want companies that have been bailed out by the government using that tax money to head to Vegas.

The Hill then inadvertently shows that Obama is being held to a higher standard than his Republican predecessors:

Ironically, a tool that Obama keeps at the ready to avoid verbal missteps - the teleprompter - has quickly become a running gag, with a popular blog launched pretending to be the voice of Obama's omnipresent teleprompter. This might not play against a politician, except for the fact that Obama was praised as a great orator on the campaign trail by right and left.

The fact that the same people who would mock Obama for verbal missteps mock him for taking unremarkable steps to avoid them isn't really “ironic” -- it's an indication that Obama is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't. The Hill continues:

Noting Reagan's reliance on note cards, [Lee] Edwards said the teleprompter was a new factor in presidential assessment. “It's just strange,” he said. “We haven't been able to figure out why he's so dependent on it, because he's a really intelligent guy.

So, Ronald Reagan relied on note cards, but it's supposed to be remarkable and inexplicable that Barack Obama uses a teleprompter? Huh? Do Lee Edwards and The Hill think there is some fundamental difference between note cards and a teleprompter?

Finally, would it surprise you to learn that Edwards is the Heritage Foundation's “Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought,” or that Heritage touts him as “the chief historian of the American conservative movement”?