Gaffes galore

Why criticise the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi for her gaffes after the results for the Delhi Assembly polls were announced? Around the same time, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott was attacking the country's former Labor government for a 'holocaust' of jobs. Abbott was answering a question about the latest unemployment figures that showed a rate of 7.3 per cent in South Australia, where defence industry jobs have traditionally been strong. Abbott subsequently apologised and withdrew the comment and replaced the word 'holocaust' with 'decimation'. Do such gaffes matter? Sifting through recent records, Bloomberg columnist and co-editor of 'The Making of the Presidential Candidates 2012', Jonathan Bernstein concludes that politicians' gaffes really "don't hurt them" but "there's not much to be gained" by freewheeling conversations either.