Back in 1999, I remember receiving an email of 'Gore-isms' that contained alleged quotes belonging to Al Gore. One of them caught my eye was the infamous 'Potatoe' quote, where the Veep supposedly told a kid in a school class that he did pretty good at spelling the word Potato, but he forgot to add the 'e' at the end.

The quote was true. The VP did it. Just not Vice President Gore - it was Vice President Dan Quayle several years earlier.

Reading further, I found that all of the quotes that were attributed to Gore had previously been attributed to Quayle - someone had simply changed the names.

Whether Quayle actually said any of these quotes (beyond the well documented Potatoe quote) is anyone's guess.

My point is that as much as the Gore quotes were made up, so are, undoubtedly many, if not all of the Hilary quotes, the Bush quotes, and whatever Bill quotes were circulating out there.

The reason that these things circulate at all is because of unscrupulous elements in both parties that think the end justifies the means and that trashing your opponent, even if its untrue, is okay as long as you win the election.

That is not how I want our political process to work, and I would hope that's not how you want it to work. So the next time someone asks you to read a book or email of alleged quotes (which they will, this being an election year after all), just say 'Noe'.