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Sunday 27 May 2012

Meet the real Joe Biden: Vice-President Plonker

05 November 2008

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The scrutiny of Sarah Palin diverted attention from Obama’s running mate, says Freddy Gray. Biden is not that popular, a ‘gaffe machine’, and he eats Snickers bars in one mouthful

Biden is a devout liberal internationalist, committed to using US muscle to make the world a better, more democratic place. He has encouraged American intervention at almost every opportunity, from Kosovo and Baghdad in the past to Darfur and Georgia in the future. He may have opposed the first Gulf war in 1991, he played a key role in ramping up Bill Clinton’s hostility towards the Serbs. He keenly backed the US’s subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Today, Biden maintains that he and the American people were misinformed about Iraq. If that’s the case, he has only himself to blame. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2002, he helped ensure political and public support for the war. During the Senate hearings, his committee failed to consult a single expert who opposed military attacks. Biden pushed for a United Nations agreement, but ultimately he voted for President Bush’s pre-emptive war without UN support. (In fact, as far back as 1998, he had actually called for unilateral action against Iraq: ‘The only way we’re going to get rid of Saddam Hussein is we’re going to end up having to start it alone.’)

In a recent interview with the New Yorker, Biden said that he had only consented to be vice-president on the condition that he would be ‘part of the major policy decisions’. Uh-oh. After eight years of Dick Cheney, who greatly aggrandised the size and scope of his office and the executive, many Americans were hoping the next ‘veep’ would return to his traditional role: characterised by Benjamin Franklin as ‘Your Superfluous Excellency’. Biden, with his appetite for conflict and gift for the gaffe, can hardly be expected to settle for prestigious irrelevance inside the vice-president’s mansion.

Who knows? For now, we should applaud Barack Obama, not simply for being the first black man elected President of the United States — there’s enough people doing that already — but for winning an election despite having Joseph Biden on his ticket.

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Non Person

November 6th, 2008 12:20pm Report this comment

Indeed. Breathtaking, almost epic stupidity. What could be going through such a person's head? But he's a pitiable figure, Freddy Gray, not least for choosing the diminutive "Freddy" when other forms are available.

Proposing that an otherwise sentient being could be a worse potential head of state than the Alaskan ... well, poor Freddy. He fancies himself a wit and needs a hook. The reader asks for one to yank him from the stage.

Augustus

November 6th, 2008 12:35pm Report this comment

There was certainly something creepy about droves of irate women in lock-step blasting Sarah Palin, when very few of these critics could have emerged from small-town Alaska with an intact marriage and five children to run the state of Alsaka. So the world discovered that the media knows nothing about the nature of wisdom, how it is found, or indeed how it is to be adjudicated. For two months Palin was demonized as a dunce because she did not, in the fashion of the class toady with his hand constantly up in the front row, impress in flash-card recall the glasses-on-the-nose Charlie Gibson, or the clenched-tooth Katie Couric.

Meanwhile Ol' Joe Biden could not just get away with the occasional gaffe, he could say things so outrageous, so silly and empty that, had they come out of the mouth of Sarah Palin, she would have long ago been forced to step aside from the ticket.

One can never know if Sarah Palin would have made a good vice president. But by the standard of Barack Obama's choice of Joe Biden as a running mate, she is wise and ethical far beyond his measure.

Poppy

November 6th, 2008 7:52pm Report this comment

Having spent the last month in DC, it is great to hear someone profile Biden, the vice president elect who seems to have been almost absent in the run up to tuesday's election, especially when you consider the incessant coverage of Palin.

He sounds like someone's slightly embarrassing uncle with tourettes that everyone tries to ignore.

Lets hope Obama can keep him under control.

Lillian

November 6th, 2008 8:01pm Report this comment

it seems rather odd that you should feel the need to critisize another's name and yet clearly withhold your own.

Surely the point is not that palin would make a better vice president than biden but that they are both poor choices?

Non Person

November 7th, 2008 12:54am Report this comment

That’s Mr Person to you, Lillian.

Anyway, congratulations on your own name, your real name, and for revealing it. You’re made of stronger stuff than I. But I’ll still take Joe the Vice President over the Alaskan.

roger cooper

November 7th, 2008 3:11pm Report this comment

Poppy, what is so embarrassing about this uncle with his 'tourettes', whom everyone tries to ignore? I couldn't find 'tourette' in any English language dictionary I have, although many Americanisms are listed, so I turned to OUP's French dictionary, which glosses 'touret' as 'small wheel, polishing-wheel: reel, drum'. If I was at one of your parties and there was an elderly gentleman man with a few small polishing-wheels or drums, he'd be the first person I'd like to chat with. Can you enlighten us, please?

shark

November 7th, 2008 4:40pm Report this comment

Dust off the Tussauds clown. He's been living off the state for 35 years but he is waxed to perfection, nattily garbed and complete with extra hairpieces.

Scary!
He could by Prezzy one day.

David Short

November 8th, 2008 5:22pm Report this comment

I know the Spectator has vulgarized itself in the last few years, but I never thought I'd see the word 'plonker' used in it.

slinkybender

November 8th, 2008 10:23pm Report this comment

roger cooper --

See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourette_syndrome

Ray

November 10th, 2008 9:11am Report this comment

The man makes Sarah Palin look like an intellectual giant.

jackw

November 11th, 2008 2:11am Report this comment

Ummm... worse thn Sarah Plin? Please. Knows the issues but shoots his mouth of. That's Biden. And to think he will be overly storng in a Barack Obama/Rahm Emmanuel White House is way wrong. I only quote James Forsyth when I say "Washington will be a lonely place for any Democrat who crosses the Obama White House". It's only the truth.

Mark Solomon

November 12th, 2008 6:23pm Report this comment

Well done Freddy, all you journalists are starting to see the negatives about Obama (eg his VP is worse than Sarah Palin would have been!) but some of us knew all of this BEFORE the election but none of you so-called 'professionals' would print anything negative when it mattered.

You also fail to mention that Biden's foreign policy 'expertise' has left him on the wrong side of most issues and that had his approach to the USSR been followed that country would still be around today. And how can you forget Biden's first Presidential campaign in 1988, when he had to withdraw after being found to have plagiarised the mightily impressive Neil Kinnock!! What judgement in a man so close to the button!

Personally, I would have felt safer with VP Palin although Obama's age and health should spare us!

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