Open Thread * Joe Biden, The Gift That Keeps on Givin’ [Update]
By SusanUnPC on October 4, 2008 at 1:25 PM in Joe Biden, Open Thread
This ad came out yesterday:
Thanks to our writer Bud White for sending me the video link. Bud has a great radio program coming up on Monday night. (We’ll have promos up for his special guest early Monday. Take my word for it: Don’t miss his show.)
Back to Joey Biden*, with this from a New York newspaper editorial:
For all the focus on Sarah Palin’s graceful performance in Thursday’s vice presidential showdown, a more significant spectacle was taking place behind the other rostrum. That’s where Joe Biden, speaking with the pompus self-importance befitting his 36 years in the Senate, told one baffling fib after another. …
Here’s the list of Biden gaffes during the vice presidential debate on Thursday night that the editors of the New York Post noted:
- It’s “simply not true” that Barack Obama said he’d meet Iran’s president without preconditions, Biden insisted.
Yet when Obama was asked if he would in a debate during the primaries, he said yes – a position Biden back then termed “naive.”
- Biden said he’s “always supported” clean-coal technology – after stating emphatically only last month, “We’re not supporting clean coal.”
- Biden asserted – repeatedly – that the US spends more money on three weeks’ combat in Iraq than it’s spent in Afghanistan since the war began.
That claim’s only remotely intelligible if he limits Afghan expenditures merely to US rebuilding efforts – and even then, he’s off by a factor of three, according to State Department numbers.
- Also on Afghanistan, Biden insisted – repeatedly – that “our commanding general in Afghanistan said the surge principle in Iraq will not work” there.
That may not be an out-and-out lie, but it took supposed foreign-policy neophyte Sarah Palin to bring any context or nuance to the statement.
What Gen. David McKiernan had said was that tribal realities in Afghanistan are very different than in Iraq – requiring a different form of cooperation.
But he flatly said more troops, and more local engagement, are needed.
Sounds like a surge to us.
- Then there was what might have been the biggest head-scratcher of the night. Said Biden of the Bush administration’s supposed Middle East follies:
“When … along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”
Huh?
Assuming that Biden was referring to when, in 2005, American and French pressure helped the Lebanese people kick Syrian troops out of Lebanon, who ever thought NATO occupation of that deeply divided country was a good idea?
As if America’s NATO allies would have gone in the first place.
But hey, as long as it makes Biden sound presidential.
At some point, Americans have to wonder: Is this a fellow who should be a heartbeat away from the White House? …
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* This footnote is from the above-the-fold section, referring to “Joey Biden.”
I’ve read the great political book, What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“Joey” Biden is one of the featured politicians in that book. It was published over a decade ago — the book covers the 1992 campaign — but it captures the life stories of some of the most intriguing U.S. politicians of the 20th century in the most detailed biographies I’ve ever read on any of the primary subjects, from George Bush Sr. to Bob Dole to Michael Dukakis to Gary Hart to “Joey” Biden.
“Joey” is how Joe Biden was known when he was growing up, and pulling some incredibly dangerous, crazy stunts with his gang of friends — which author Richard Ben Cramer describes in amazing detail.
The sections of the book that focus on Biden’s first presidential run are mind-boggling. To say that Biden is “certifiable” is to be kind. Cramer, a longtime contributor to the liberal Rolling Stone, doesn’t shy away from describing what Biden’s personality is really like: Bombastic, overly bold, highly erratic, hyper-energetic, scattered, disorganized, and lacking in “good ol’ C.S.,” as my mom used to say.
If I get some time, I’ll try to type up a part of the section on Biden, but you really should buy the book. It’s great reading. And it offers up an intimate portrait of the TYPES of people who decide that THEY can be president of the United States, and what they’re willing to go through in order to get there.
The book also details the many political advisers — including Pat Caddell and Bob Shrum — who we’ve all gotten to know as TV analysts.
Update: Okay, I couldn’t resist. I went to the book’s page at Amazon, and searched the book itself for references to Biden. If you have an Amazon account and have ever purchased anything from Amazon, you can go to specific pages of this book and read that page. Here are two screenshot samplings of some of the references to “Joey Biden”:
Here are a few more snippets:
These snippets refer to the months and months that it took Biden and his frustrated advisers to get a speech written that he’d accept, as well as to Bob Shrum (who was interviewed recently by Bud White at NoQuarter Radio):
By the way, the section of the book on Gary Hart also describes the excruciating writing and rewriting of HIS big speech that Hart’s overworked, frustrated advisers kept rewriting and rewriting, each time getting bad reviews from Hart. (It’s amazing to see how these politicians really operate, behind the scenes.)
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