"Poor George, he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth"
-- Texas Gov. Ann Richards on George H.W. Bush, July 19, 1988
Fast-forward to Michigan in August 2014 and the quip applies to Rick Snyder, who tripped into trouble while trying to show empathy for Metro Detroit flood victims.
"I’ve been through a lot of things like that, Frank. We just recently had holes in our roof from storm damage to our lake house," he told Frank Beckmann of WJR on Wednesday morning after this slow, sweet setup from the friendly radio host: "A lot of people look at you, Governor Snyder, and go 'here's the rich nerd who's always had it well because he's successful; he's never been impacted by this flooding stuff.' "
Here's more of Snyder's attempt to show he feels victims' pain: "We have a vacation place and we had a limb come down on the roof and had water running through the whole place; those experiences are not pleasant ones and they had to take some trees down."
Ah, the peril of impromptu remarks -- "going off-message" in political jargon. As Deadline Detroit coverage noted that afternoon, the governor "committed a politically tone-deaf stumble."
His Democratic re-election opponent, Mark Schauer, posts Thursday afternoon on Facebook: "Most people do not have a second or third home to turn to and many others have lost their primary means of transportation." That comment was shared more than 350 times in four hours.
Derision has gone national with a post at the popular Daily Kos blog and a Twitter meme using the hashtag #JusLlikeTheDetroitFlood.
"Yup. Snyder just made Mitt Romney seem like a Regular Joe," says the Daily Kos critique under the screen name "Brainwrap." The writer is identified only as a Michigan web developer.
Here are examples of Twitter reactions:
My butler spilled a whole bottle of Evian at my mansion... or was it the lake house or was it the hunting lodge? #JustLikeTheDetroitFlood
— Ned Staebler (@NedStaebler) August 14, 2014
When you spill $15/glass rum all over your DeVos campaign contribution it's #JustLikeTheDetroitFlood
— Brett DeGroff (@BrettDeGroff) August 14, 2014
Had to throw out a perfectly good smoking jacket that accidentally got wet in the rain. Kept thinking "This is #JustLikeTheDetroitFlood "
— Chris Savage (@Eclectablog) August 14, 2014
Naturally, the Michigan Democratic Party pounced promptly by posting this sendup: