Columnist William Safire has written that a blooper is an "exploitable mistake," which is worse than a goof, equivalent to a gaffe, but not as serious as a blunder.

By this standard, Sen. Trent Lott's unwise and inappropriate statement at Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party was an egregious blunder. This was the widely publicized comment by Lott that the country would have been better off if Thurmond had been elected president in 1948 when he ran on the Dixiecrat ticket. Thurmond's platform was continued racial segregation.

Lott has retracted his words and apologized several times, and perhaps he will weather the firestorm of protest he has generated.

The episode, however, recalls once again the cogent observation of Adlai Stevenson: "Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them."

It also acts as a reminder that the historical landscape is cluttered with verbal transgressions - like the following:

In 1932, Herbert Hoover's vice presidential running mate, Charles Curtis, blurted out before a group of unemployed citizens that they were just "too damn dumb" to understand the Depression.

Gary Hart, while campaigning for the Democratic nomination in 1984, told a meeting in Los Angeles: "My wife Lee campaigns in California, and I campaign in New Jersey."

Lee: "I got to hold a koala bear."

Gary: "I won't tell you what I got to hold. Samples of a toxic waste dump."

Hart won in California, but lost to Walter Mondale in New Jersey.

In 1987, at a debate in Houston featuring a group of presidential hopefuls, then-Sen. Al Gore praised a fellow Tennessean, President James K. Polk, whose middle name was Knox. But he called him "James K. Knox." It was a slip of the tongue but a bad one for a Tennessean.

In 1987, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware abandoned the race for the Democratic presidential nomination when it was revealed that he had taken phrases and gestures from a speech by Neil Kinnock, British Labor Party leader, without crediting the Briton.

In 1987, when he was vice president, George H. W. Bush heard that 350 Russian tanks had performed without a single mechanical breakdown. He remarked: "Hey, when the mechanics who keep those tanks running run out of work in the Soviet Union, send them to Detroit because we could use that kind of ability."

Minister and entrepreneur Pat Robertson was moved to re-state what he meant in 1987 when he warned that a slipping birth rate could lead to "racial suicide." (He said he had meant to say "national suicide.")

In 1988, just after Bush was elected President, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts was speaking to a gathering of businessmen in Lynn, Mass., responding to a question about newly elected Vice President Dan Quayle's qualifications. He said: "The Secret Service is under orders that if Bush is shot, to shoot Quayle."

Kerry was being facetious, but after complaints, he declared that he regretted his "inappropriate" remark.

In 1994, Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina was quoted as saying that President Clinton was so unpopular on military bases in North Carolina that "Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard." Helms later called the comment "a mistake," and the brouhaha he had touched off subsided.

Perhaps the most memorable gaffe of recent years befell Gerald Ford during his second debate with Jimmy Carter in 1976. Responding to a question by Max Frankel on the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, Ford said there was "no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe."

It was an unfortunate slip. Ford didn't mean to imply that Russia was not using Eastern Europe as its own sphere of influence and making certain of this with military forces. He was pointing out that the proud and independent people there didn't go around stressing their bondage to the Russians.

Ford later acknowledged that the Soviet military was in Eastern Europe, and "that is not what President Ford wants and that is not what the American people want." But it was difficult to recover from his initial words.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter discussed a raft of issues in an interview with Playboy magazine - and then he mentioned lust. "I've looked on a lot of women with lust," he said. "I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognized I will do - and I have done it - and God forgives me for it." The headlines went on for some time.

By no means are gaffes and goofs a recent phenomenon. During the presidential campaign of 1880, Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock of Civil War fame had a good chance against James Garfield. But when asked about tariffs, Hancock commented: "The tariff is a local issue."

Though tariff bills are, in fact, the product of pressures by local interests, the opposition did its best to depict the old soldier as an ignorant oaf.

Harper's Weekly called Hancock's statement "loose, aimless, unintelligent, absurd." And The Nation snickered, "The General's talk about the tariff is that of a man who knows nothing about it, and who apparently, until he began to talk had never thought about it."

Garfield went on to victory, partly because of Hancock's words.

One of the heroes to emerge from the Spanish-American War was Adm. George Dewey of Manila Bay fame. ("You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.") Approached about running for the presidency in 1900, he initially expressed disinterest. In April, however, he changed his mind and indicated in a statement he gave to a newspaperman that he would be willing to serve the American people if they wanted him.

Dewey went on to say: "Since studying this subject I am convinced that the office of the President is not such a very difficult one to fill, his duties being mainly to execute the laws of Congress."

Dewey was shown to be a simple, competent naval officer who had no feel for politics. His race for the White House was over before it started.

Probably the costliest gaffe of all time occurred during the 1884 presidential campaign pitting Democrat Grover Cleveland against Sen. James G. Blaine of Maine. The electoral votes of New York state were pivotal - whoever won there would become president. In the state, the votes of Irish-Americans in New York City could well carry the day.

Shortly before the election, Blaine went to the Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan to meet some Protestant ministers who supported him. The Rev. Samuel Burchard, a Presbyterian clergyman, greeted the Republican candidate on their behalf and declared: "We expect to vote for you next Tuesday. We are Republicans and don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the Party whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism and Rebellion!"

Blaine, inexplicably, did not repudiate these words immediately.

The Democrats lost no time in taking advantage of this blunder. They pounded on this insulting reference to Irish-American Catholics, who were mostly Democrats. The city was flooded with fliers quoting the remark, "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion."

Cleveland carried New York by 1,149 votes out of 1,125,000 cast. The state's 36 electoral votes swung the election to him.

Those in public life might be well-served to heed the advice of historian Barbara Tuchman:

"Words are seductive and dangerous material to be used with caution."