Needed: A Vice Presidential Seal

It’s time to slap an official seal on our Vice President’s yapper. This otherwise likeable guy is also a one-man blooper extravaganza.

Now he’s done it again. But this time it isn’t as laughoffable as asking a man in the wheelchair to stand up and take a bow. Or as whacky as telling people that we must spend money to keep from going bankrupt. Or only flubbing names, such as referring to Justice Roberts as “Justice Stewart.” Or John McCain as “George” during his VP acceptance speech. Or demoting Sara Palin to “Lieutenant Governor” of Alaska. Or reinventing history by recounting President Roosevelt’s televised 1929 commentary on the stock market crash. (Besides no TV yet, Hoover was President at that time.)

This time Biden’s so-called gaffe caused us some real trouble!

In an interview with the Wall street Journal, our Vice President referred to Russia as a “limping and humbled nation.”

…Mr. Biden pointed out that the U.S. and Russia aren’t strategic equals. “I think we vastly underestimate the hand that we hold,” he said, noting that Russia’s economy and population are “withering.” “They’re in a situation where the world is changing before them and they’re clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable.” As for the arsenal Russia inherited from the U.S.S.R., Mr. Biden said, “They can’t sustain it.”

Tensions were already palpable between the two superpowers, and Biden’s suggestion that Russia’s economic troubles would force the Kremlin to cooperate with us on national security issues did not play as another “crazy Joe gaffe” over there.

Ellen Barry writing for the New York Times has this take:

Within hours, a top Kremlin aide had released a barbed statement comparing Mr. Biden to Dick Cheney. Commentators announced Mr. Biden’s emergence as Washington’s new “gray cardinal” — the figure who, from the shadows, makes all the decisions that matter. Others said Washington’s mask had been torn off, revealing Mr. Obama’s “reset” as at best insubstantial and at worst duplicitous.

It will also be hard to convince the Kremlin that the comments don’t indicate a deeper drama. Russians have spent months searching for clues to Mr. Obama’s true intentions; when Mr. Obama killed a fly during a television interview shortly before traveling to Moscow, for example, several analysts here interpreted it as a message to Russia.

One can hope that the creation of a bilateral commission led by Presidents Obama and Medvedev will soften Biden’s verbal assault and lead to better communications and mechanisms for ongoing cooperation. Fortunately for us, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be in charge of this project. Secretary Clinton also tried to help clean up Biden’s oral poop during her appearance on Meet the Press by noting that, “We view Russia as a great power. I don’t think that’s at all what the vice president meant. Every country faces challenges. We have our challenges; Russia has their challenges.”

Finally, here is my favorite Biden gaffe. On September 11, 2008, almost a month before the election, in Nashua, New Hampshire Biden blurted out, “Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Quite frankly it might have been a better pick than me.”

I think he got that one right.