Romney Is Latest in a Long Line to Trip Over a Tongue As critics pummel Mitt Romney over his secretly recorded comments at a fund-raiser, he can at least take comfort in this: He's not the first. Presidential campaign history overflows with candidates who tripped over their own loose tongues - some obscuring their actual meaning, others accidentally revealing it. Even a cursory analysis shows that well over 47 percent of races for the White House have seen a candidate suffer self-inflicted wounds. In Mr. Romney's case, he has stood by his remarks, but nevertheless acknowledged he had spoken inelegantly. Consider what follows a list of the Top 10 verbal misfires under the pitiless glare on the national political stage. ¶Senator John McCain, 2008: "The fundamentals of the economy are strong." This off-key attempt at reassurance, delivered in mid-September as Lehman Brothers was collapsing, helped seal the fate of a losing campaign. The beneficiary was Barack Obama, who had endured his own embarrassment over a secretly recorded remark to donors that some working-class voters "cling to their guns or religion" as reasons to support Republicans. ¶Senator John Kerry, 2004: "I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it." The unfortunate comment about money to pay for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, made by Mr. Kerry in March during a college event in Pennsylvania, helped cement his reputation as an equivocating politician after President George W. Bush's campaign exploited it in mocking television ads. ¶Vice President Al Gore, 2000: "I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Critics seized on this clumsy assertion, made during a March 1999 CNN interview, to lampoon Mr. Gore as a brazen embellisher taking credit for the innovation. The attacks later helped George W. Bush's campaign to influence media post-mortems after a fall 2000 debate in which Mr. Gore made minor misstatements. Mr. Gore ultimately received more votes; Mr. Bush moved into the White House the next January. ¶President Bill Clinton, 1996: "You think I raised your taxes too much. It might surprise you to know that I think I raised them too much, too. With that acknowledgment at a 1995 Houston fund-raiser, Mr. Clinton roiled Democrats, Republicans and his own aides. He won re-election easily anyway, in part by linking his Republican opponent, Bob Dole, to Speaker Newt Gingrich, who had bluntly predicted his agenda would cause the existing structure of Medicare to "wither on the vine." ¶President George Bush, 1992: "Message: I care." Stung by accusations that he was disconnected from the economic struggles of average Americans, Mr. Bush fueled them by giving New Hampshire voters this piece of political stage direction. Mr. Clinton's "It's the economy, stupid" campaign proved resonant enough to withstand publication of a 1970 letter in which he acknowledged having avoided fighting in Vietnam without resisting the draft "to preserve my political viability." He won a three-way race against Mr. Bush and Ross Perot. ¶Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, 1988: "I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life." This emotionless response, to a debate question whose hypothetical premise involving the rape and murder of his wife, fixed Mr. Dukakis's image as a governmental technocrat at odds with most Americans on the high-voltage issue of crime and punishment. That liability trumped the plutocratic mien that George Bush, then the vice president, had taken on in explaining his Iowa straw poll defeat this way: "A lot of the people who support me, they were at an air show, they were at their daughter's coming-out party, or teeing up at the golf course in that all-important last round." Mr. Bush won handily. ¶Walter F. Mondale, 1984: "Mr. Reagan will raise taxes and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did. Intending to impress with candor, Mr. Mondale handed President Ronald Reagan a weapon with this stunner in his speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination. Reagan's celebration of "Morning in America" and warnings against tax-and-spend liberalism produced a landslide - despite his shaky debate performances, most famous for one rambling response that began: "I remember driving down the California coast one day." ¶Ronald Reagan, 1980: "Approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation."