Top 10 Unfortunate Political One-Liners

"I'm not a crook"
-1973 Richard Nixon
On November 17, 1973, President Richard Nixon infamously denied any involvement in the Watergate scandal with his now timeless defense. Thing is, he was.

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman"
-1998 Bill Clinton
With those words, President Clinton didn't just dig himself a hole, he stole a backhoe, dug a really deep hole, drove the backhoe into the hole, wired the backhoe with explosives and blew it up.

"Read my lips: no new taxes"
-1988 George H.W. Bush
It was a strong, decisive, bold statement, and you don't need a history degree to see where this is going. As presidents sometimes must, Bush raised taxes. His words were used against him by then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton in a devastating attack ad during the 1992 presidential campaign.

"The fundamentals of the economy are strong"
-2008 John McCain
Senator McCain was probably trying to be reassuring, as Presidents ought to be in times of turmoil and stress. Yet, when investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy hours after he made this statement during the 2008 campaign, McCain looked shockingly out of touch. His opponent, Barack Obama, wasted no opportunity to repeat McCain's statement, a particularly effective attack as the economy went further and further south.

"I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times."
-1976 Jimmy Carter
The decision to do an interview with Playboy magazine was possibly not the best call of President Carter's tenure. Yet, it was all going pretty well until he started talking about the Bible and adultery. Now, Carter's not actually admitting anything shocking.

"It's vile. It's more sad than anything else, to see someone with such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual addiction."
- 1998 Mark Foley
Republican Rep. Mark Foley, having uttered this gem at the height of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, was brought down by an addiction to sexually explicit text messages to male congressional pages.

"We still seek no wider war."
-1964 Lyndon B. Johnson
While the American government claimed that North Vietnamese warships had attacked U.S. vessels in the Gulf, it later turned out to be the opposite. The Vietnam escalation followed shortly thereafter.

"That depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."
-1998 Bill Clinton
Clinton reached new depths of word-parsing during his videotaped August 17 testimony in front of a grand jury. Until then, America hadn't been sure there was more than one definition of "is." Just to be clear, there isn't.

"The fundamental business of the country, that is, production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis."
-1929 Herbert Hoover
Four days later, the stock market crashed, depression followed and Hoover became a joke.

"You know, I always wondered about that taping equipment but I'm damn glad we have it, aren't you?"
-1973 Richard Nixon
President Nixon actually said this to Watergate co-conspirator H.R. Haldeman in April 1973, weeks before the U.S. Senate began its nationally televised hearings.