Karl Rove said gravitas is a quality people look for in a presidential candidate that Sarah Palin does not possess. Image: CC scripting news/Flickr

Gravitas, according to Wikipedia, is a Latin word referring to a person having substance, or depth of personality. Karl Rove, even though he managed to get George W. Bush elected, has said that Sarah Palin doesn’t have the gravitas to be taken seriously as a Republican presidential candidate. Her lack of gravitas showed this week when Tea Party candidates who rode her endorsement to primary victories refused to answer questions about Palin’s presidential qualifications.

Sarah Palin’s gravitas deficit

Millions of Americans, and perhaps even Sarah Palin, now know what “gravitas” means, thanks to Karl Rove, a man not known for introducing such dignified words into political discourse. Rove told the Telegraph he doubted that the American people thought Palin had the gravitas for “the most demanding job in the world.” Rove offered Palin’s reality show on the Discovery Channel as an example of how the former vice presidential candidate’s image is out of sync with a presence voters would expect to occupy the Oval Office.

Karl Rove throws his gravitas around

Rove wields a certain amount of gravitas himself within the Republican establishment. He got George W. Bush elected twice and has advised several GOP governors and congressmen to electoral victories. Rove knows how to win elections, which may explain his candid assessment of Palin and her Tea Party protege, Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell. Last month Rove told Fox News that he wasn’t impressed by O’Donnell’s political skills. He was also concerned about O’Donnell saying “a lot of nutty things” and misleading voters about her “checkered background.”

Palin’s gravitas trickles down

Tea Party candidates who benefited most from Sarah Palin’s blessing may agree with Rove’s assessment of the Mama Grizzly’s gravitas. Thursday, O’Donnell lifted her self-imposed ban on talking with the media and spoke to Jim Acosta from CNN. Acosta asked her whether Palin was qualified to be commander in chief. She dodged the question, asking “Is she running for president?” The New York Daily News reports that Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller refused to publicly endorse Palin, which prompted an angry e-mail from her husband Todd, who wrote “Sarah put her a– on the line for Joe and he can’t answer a simple question.”

Sources

Christian Science Monitor

The Telegraph

New York Daily News

A Google bomb put George W. Bush at the top of the list for the miserable failure search term for more than two years. Flickr photo.

Miserable failure are two words commonly associated with George W. Bush, even without the former president owning the top listing on search engine result pages for more than two years. But Google diffused the Google bomb in January 2007 that firmly established “W” in what most of the country believed his rightful place after the 2008 election.

Miserable failure George W. Bush

For two years, when Google users typed “miserable failure” for their search term, George W. Bush was instant cash at the top of the list, first for his biography and later for images. Pranksters built the miserable failure scheme, known as a Google bomb, after former Democratic Missouri congressman Dick Gephardt applied the term to the Bush administration. Bush supporters eventually retaliated by Google-bombing Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton and uber-liberal Michael Moore as miserable failures.

Miserable failure results today

Search Google for miserable failure today, and you get results like a Wikipedia entry about a defunct rock band named Failure and a magazine called failuremag.com. George W. Bush still shows up in a Google image search for miserable failure, but Google has effectively prevented miserable failure and any other Google bombs from exploding on the web. However, miserable failures with their credit cards will still need debt consolidation.

Miserable failure no more

The miserable failure Google bomb was possible because before 2007, Google’s search-rank algorithm could rank a page higher if enough other sites linked to that page using similar anchor text. When Google diffused the miserable failure Google bomb in 2007, searchengineland.com asked Google spam killer Matt Cutts how they did it. He said it’s done automatically without human intervention. “It’s completely algorithmic,” he said, “We’re not going to claim it’s 100 percent perfect.”

‘Miserable failure’ still applies

The term “miserable failure” appears to be timeless. Today, when miserable failure turns up on a Google search it’s used to describe athletes, debt management, public programs and politicians, both foreign and domestic. When Google diffused the George W. Bush miserable failure bomb, it managed to figure out how to stop the pranks. But there’s always room for legitimate commentary about miserable failures.