Some thoughts from Democrats about Senator Biden
Before we get to the rather negative comments from Democrats, we recommend the appreciation of Senator Biden written by David Brooks that appeared yesterday in the NYT. Now we’ll move on. Ron Fournier of AP notes Senator Biden’s unusual comment about his running mate: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”:
Biden pick shows lack of confidence…the question is whether Biden’s depth counters Obama’s inexperience — or highlights it? After all, Biden is anything but a change agent, having been in office longer than half of all Americans have been alive. Longer than McCain. And he talks too much. On the same day he announced his second bid for the presidency, Biden found himself explaining why he had described Obama as “clean.” And there’s the 2007 ABC interview in which Biden said he would stand by an earlier statement that Obama was not ready to serve as president.
Maureen Dowd in the NYT ridiculed Senator Biden’s lifting his speech without attribution from British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock:
Mr. Kinnock, an orator of great eloquence, rhetorically asked why his ancestors, Welsh coal miners, did not get ahead as fast as he. ”Did they lack talent?” he asked, in his lilting rhythm. ”Those people who could sing and play and recite and write poetry? Those people who could make wonderful beautiful things with their hands? Those people who could dream dreams, see visions? Why didn’t they get it? Was it because they were weak? Those people who could work 8 hours underground and then come up and play football? Weak?”…
”Those same people who read poetry and wrote poetry and taught me how to sing verse?” continued Mr. Biden, whose father was a Chevrolet dealer in Wilmington. ”Is it because they didn’t work hard? My ancestors, who worked in the coal mines of Northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours?”…Senator Biden’s Irish relations, it would seem, were similar, though they seemed to stay underground longer.
ABC’s The Note commented on Senator Biden’s “capacity to jabber on and on in high dudgeon and low, without any sense of how he is perceived”:
Today, let it be known that we resolve to make fun less often of a certain United States Senator. Senator X (as we shall call “him”) isn’t the ONLY person in Washington who likes to hear himself talk, but there does seem to be a higher-than-average level of enjoyment emanating from his mouth and eyes as he speaks.
From his assurances that he is being “frank” and “serious,” to his pledges that he is not being “facetious,” this stalwart of the World’s Most Deliberative Body continues to amaze us — and his colleagues — with his capacity to jabber on and on in high dudgeon and low, without any sense of how he is perceived. He will seize any opportunity to pontificate, expressing his views with fervid self-assurance and with little concern for time constraints or his audience.
The Washington Post confirmed ABC’s assessment:
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), in his first 12 minutes of questioning the nominee, managed to get off only one question. Instead, during his 30-minute round of questioning, Biden spoke about his own Irish American roots, his “Grandfather Finnegan,” his son’s application to Princeton (he attended the University of Pennsylvania instead, Biden said), a speech the senator gave on the Princeton campus, the fact that Biden is “not a Princeton fan,” and his views on the eyeglasses of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).
(We won’t bother to repeat the anecdote at the top of this New Republic article.) Let’s quote the candidate himself in a (very long) conversation from October 2004 at CFR in which he said a great many things. Here are but a few:
as Yeats said, speaking of his Ireland in his poem “Easter Sunday,” he said, “The world has changed — it has changed utterly. A terrible beauty has been born.” A terrible beauty has been born. The world has changed utterly in the last 10 years…
I spent an hour and 50 minutes with Chirac two weeks before Christmas. I told a couple of you this privately. Chirac has an ego as big as this room. He’s an interesting guy. We all understand the French have been less than helpful, and they’ve been a pain in the you-know-what. But guess what? I sat down, I start up the conversation, I said, “Mr. President, let me ask — what can I ask of you — what can I answer for you?” I said, “Mr. President, has your desire to see George Bush defeated yet been overcome by your desire to see France’s interests promoted in the region?” And he went, “Mon dieu, I — ” [Laughter] — yes. [Laughter.] Then I made it very clear I could not negotiate at all, obviously — I’m a minority senator who no one listens to…
We ought to have a come-to-Jesus meeting, as they say in southern Delaware, with Saudi Arabia. We ought to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with them. We ought to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with an old friend, and he is a friend who occasionally calls me at home — I always know it’s him when he says, “Joe, it’s Mubarak. What are you doing?”…
You think foreign policy is a lot more complicated than it is. But, foreign policy is — and I get in trouble with my intellectual buddies on this, because Biden is just an old politician when he says things like this. I’ve only been doing it for 30 years — foreign policy is not a lot more than the logical extension of personal relationships, with a whole lot less information to act upon.
(One might want to ask the leaders of Russia, Iran, North Korea or China if they think that “foreign policy is not a lot more than the logical extension of personal relationships.”)
Senators Obama and Biden would seem to make quite a set of matched bookends. One of their chief differences would appear to be that Senator Biden has a 30+ year history in Washington of making inane or cribbed statements, delivered with great self-importance, and that Senator Obama’s track record of doing so is much shorter — though equally impressive and perhaps even more grandiose.