Who Had the Worst Week?

(May 21) -- Casey James was voted off "American Idol," Chad Ochocinco got 86'ed from "Dancing With the Stars," and Campbell Brown admitted on the air that her program simply doesn't attract enough viewers -- so she's leaving CNN. But four politicians had an even worse week. Here's your chance to pick the biggest loser.

The Washington political establishment in general took a beating in Tuesday's primary elections. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania became the symbol of this year's backlash against incumbents, losing to Rep. Joe Sestak.

The 80-year-old Specter, one of the ultimate political survivors, may have sealed his fate when he jumped to the Democratic Party a year ago after decades as a Republican. "My change in party will enable me to be re-elected," he explained in a moment of candor that came back to haunt him in campaign ads. The remark made Specter "the embodiment of the cynical career politician," said Time's Mark Halperin. (Will Specter follow the lead of another Capitol Hill veteran, Tom DeLay, and go on to shake his booty on "Dancing With the Stars"?)

Rep. Mark Souder also lost his House seat Tuesday, but not because voters threw him out. He quit in disgrace. The Indiana Republican -- an outspoken family-values conservative -- admitted he had an affair with a woman on his staff.

"I sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff," Souder told a news conference. He said his wife had offered to stand by his side, completing a familiar Washington sex scandal tableau, but he refused. "I'm sick of politicians who drag their spouses in front of cameras rather than confronting the problem they caused," he said.

The Souder scandal comes with a video, as so many do. But in a twist, the tape features the congressman and his mistress discussing the virtues of abstinence education.

Democrats would have spent more time crowing about Souder's downfall, but they were busy defending Richard Blumenthal. The Connecticut attorney general, who'd been considered a shoo-in to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, quickly learned that "a few misplaced words" can cause a whole lot of trouble for a candidate.

The New York Times cited examples of statements Blumenthal has made over the years indicating he served in Vietnam. He was a member of the Marine Corps Reserve but was never stationed overseas.

"On a few occasions I have misspoken about my service," Blumenthal acknowledged at a news conference Tuesday. Asked if he would apologize to real Vietnam vets, he would only say, "I regret that I misspoke.''

In an unscientific poll of more than 1,700 AOL News readers, 95 percent said they didn't believe Blumenthal accidentally misspoke.

Tea party hero Rand Paul started the week as a big winner, toppling the party's hand-picked candidate in Tuesday's Republican Senate primary in Kentucky. But in a series of post-election interviews, he ran into trouble explaining his libertarian views on anti-discrimination laws.

Paul said on Wednesday he abhors racism and supports the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but he has a problem with the part of the law that applies to private businesses. By Thursday, he was blaming the media, telling CNN's Wolf Blitzer he would have voted for the law in 1964 and releasing a statement insisting he does not want to scrap the Civil Rights Act. Today, on ABC's "Good Morning America," the novice candidate blamed all this on "politics."

Welcome to the big leagues, Dr. Paul. To paraphrase an observation made by pundits such as Charles Krauthammer on Fox and Politico's Shira Toeplitz, if it's your first time in the national spotlight and you have to issue a statement promising you won't repeal the Civil Rights Act, you have a problem.

Since Blumenthal made "misspoke" the word of the week, honorable mention for the worst-week award could go to Mexican President Felipe Calderon's interpreter at Wednesday's White House arrival ceremony. The Associated Press reported that the "halting and grammatically incoherent English translation" U.S. TV viewers got was so bad that the official White House transcript ignored it and went instead with a much different translation provided by the Mexican Embassy.

In the FAIL of the Week category, it's hard to top Wenlock and Mandeville, the mascots for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. They made their debut Wednesday and were met with nearly universal ridicule.

• Incredibly stupid -- Moonbattery
• World unites online against London's Olympic mascots -- Vancouver Sun
• ''They look like the consequence of a drunken one-night stand between a Teletubby and the Michelin man." -- comment from a Times of London reader

AOL News' Joe Keohane took a closer look at why Olympic mascots are always so awful and The Washington Post assembled a slideshow to illustrate the evolution of awfulness through the years.

This morning, Drudge Report readers were greeted by a top-of-the-page photo showing a small rodent scurrying past the podium in the White House Rose Garden as the president spoke about financial reform. The all-caps headline read: OBAMA DOESN'T TAKE QUESTIONS FROM THE RAT, EITHER

The picture inspired at least one caption contest and countless gags. One example from Gawker's Adrian Chen: "The rat has signed a two-book, five-figure deal with Farrar, Straus and Giroux to write about its time with Obama." ("It wasn't a rat. It was a vole," blogger Ann Althouse pointed out.)

The furry intruder reminded Los Angeles Times blogger Andrew Malcolm of a couple of other uninvited White House guests who popped up again this week. (Chutzpah Alert: In an interview with Radaronline on Tuesday, Michaela and Tareq Salahi said the White House owes them an apology for the way they were treated after being caught crashing the president's first state dinner last year. The next night, they were in a limo that was ticketed for running a red light near the White House -- while Obama's second state dinner was going on.)

"First, there were the gate-crashing Salahis who got by the crack White House protocol and security forces. Now, there's the rat. Or vole. Or some kind of rodent, who crashed a Thursday White House event in the Rose Garden," Malcolm noted on his Top of the Ticket blog.

"Through a publicist, the mouse has demanded an immediate apology from Malcolm," wrote Mediaite's Tommy Christopher.

It was that kind of week.