Sunday, August 24, 2008
Biden
The choice of Biden simply baffles me. Obama's urge to change things in the government, to shake things up, to start us all on a new course towards wonderfulness are simply put to the complete lie by chosing Biden. The man is the most inside-the-beltway and political crony you could find short of a Kennedy. He's been there since right after law school. In the Washington Post Chris Cillizza wrote
There's the "regular guy" aspect of all this - something I've mentioned and thought about vis a vis George Bush - often referred to as the likeability factor. The fact that "Biden is the kind of guy most voters can imagine themselves having a beer (or, heck, a boilermaker) with" is lovely but those millions who loathe Bush should be running from this measure as fast as their little feet can carry them. Unless, of course, their loathing is really based on some other personality quirk, not anything about policy.
He's also defensive about his own education and intelligence, quick to make weird remarks about things that are irrelevant to a topic. During confirmation hearings he often rambles on about himself rather than probing the candidate. He made a couple of famously puzzling comments about Pakistanis and 7-11 stores. During Alito's confirmation hearing he rambled on about Dianne Feinstein's glasses at one point. He also said he'd never ever ever ever take the vice presidential position. Hmm.....
During the primaries, Biden stated fervantly that Obama would be a poor choice because the presidency is not a place for training on the job. Now he's eager to support Obama as his second in command?
Bottom line, he's just too nutty and odd to be anything but a liability as the partner of a candidate who has plenty of people wary of him already.
Picking Biden, who has served in the Senate for the better part of the last four decades, seems to run counter to that core message. Biden was elected to the Senate at age 29 and spent only four years after graduating from Syracuse Law School in 1968 working in the private sector before entering public life. . . . [He] has long been a regular on the Sunday talk show circuit and is one of the pillars of the Democratic party establishment. His accomplishments . . . all were achieved as a senator operating inside the deepest heart of political Washington.Another article in the Post praised Biden for his foreign policy knowledge ("For Obama, whose only obvious weakness in the race is his light foreign policy resume, Biden would provide an immediate boost and badly complicate John McCain's attempts to paint the Illinois senator as ill-prepared to represent the United States on the world stage"). Even if true, it seems to me that his intellectual and personality quirks and liabilities overwhelm his strengths. His attitude toward women, for example, is on the surface terrific but then you discover narratives like this. Whew.
There's the "regular guy" aspect of all this - something I've mentioned and thought about vis a vis George Bush - often referred to as the likeability factor. The fact that "Biden is the kind of guy most voters can imagine themselves having a beer (or, heck, a boilermaker) with" is lovely but those millions who loathe Bush should be running from this measure as fast as their little feet can carry them. Unless, of course, their loathing is really based on some other personality quirk, not anything about policy.
He's also defensive about his own education and intelligence, quick to make weird remarks about things that are irrelevant to a topic. During confirmation hearings he often rambles on about himself rather than probing the candidate. He made a couple of famously puzzling comments about Pakistanis and 7-11 stores. During Alito's confirmation hearing he rambled on about Dianne Feinstein's glasses at one point. He also said he'd never ever ever ever take the vice presidential position. Hmm.....
During the primaries, Biden stated fervantly that Obama would be a poor choice because the presidency is not a place for training on the job. Now he's eager to support Obama as his second in command?
Bottom line, he's just too nutty and odd to be anything but a liability as the partner of a candidate who has plenty of people wary of him already.
Labels: 2008 election, people, politics
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