Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Dear Sarah -

5. One more thing … IF you find yourself getting nervous just recall Sen. Biden talking about The Great Depression, and how FDR got on the TV and comforted Americans … and then, Dearest Sarah … imagine him dressed like this …

Se. Hillary Clinton’s (D - NY) website offers YOU this, Gov. Palin:

Biden Gaffe 1 - New York Observer Interview, Jan 2007.

Biden: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

Biden also said he doubts whether American voters are going to elect “a one-term, a guy who has served for four years in the Senate,’ and added: ‘I don’t recall hearing a word from Barack about a plan or a tactic.’”

Biden Gaffe 2 - Democratic Debate August, 2007.

Stephanopoulos: “You were asked: ‘Is he ready?’ You said, ‘I think he can be ready, but right now I don’t believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.’”

Biden: “I think I stand by the statement.”

Biden Gaffe 3 - ABC This Week - May 18, 2008.

STEPHANOPOULOS: “Do you still stand by the statement?”

BIDEN: “That was a year ago. He’s learned a hell of a lot.”

STEPHANOPOULOS: “So he’s developed…uh… on the campaign trail??”

Biden Gaffe 4 - Diane Rehm Show, Aug 2007

Biden on Obama: “In order to look tough, he’s undermined his ability to be tough… “It’s a well-intended notion he has, but it’s a very naïve way of thinking how you’re going to conduct foreign policy”… “The way to deal with it is not to announce it, but to do it. The last thing you want to do is telegraph to the folks in Pakistan that we are about to violate - quote - ‘their sovereignty.’”… “Having talking points on foreign policy doesn’t get you there.”

Biden Gaffe 5. - September 13, 2007

Assessing Obama’s Iraq plan : “My impression is [Obama] thinks that if we leave, somehow the Iraqis are going to have an epiphany” of peaceful coexistence among warring sects. “I’ve seen zero evidence of that.”

Also some ironic facts:

Obama talks about the politics of change and bringing a new kind of politics to Washington, but Biden’s been in the U.S. Senate since Nixon was President.

Obama claims to be against lobbyists but Biden’s ties to MBNA and the credit card companies are legendary.

During the primaries, Biden frequently criticized Obama for stealing his ideas and copying his positions.

September 26, 2007: Biden’s Campaign Manager said, “Sen. Obama said he would do everything possible to end the war in Iraq and emphasized the need for a political solution yet he failed to show up to vote for Sen. Biden’s critical amendment to provide a political solution in Iraq.”

December 11, 2007 - Biden’s Campaign Manager on Obama: “If Iowans believe campaign funds and celebrity will fix the debacle in Iraq, put the economy on track, and provide health care and education for America’s children, they should support another candidate. But I’m confident that Iowans know what I know: our problems will require experience and leadership from Day One. Empty slogans will be no match for proven action on caucus night.”

In a Dec 2007 campaign Ad Biden says: “When this campaign is over, political slogans like ‘experience’ and ‘change’ will mean absolutely nothing. The next president has to act.”

In 2002 Biden made numerous statements supporting the war in Iraq and saying Saddam Hussein was a huge threat. Nowadays he’s trying to pretend he was against the war from the start.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q…YwOGJmYzNjMTY=

At Saddleback Obama Said Questions About Abortion Are “Above My Paygrade” - This is a phrase Biden uses all the time. He used it famously in 1998 at the weapons hearings when he said Scott Ritter did not have the knowledge to tell them what was going on in Iraq because those decisions were above his pay grade. Ritter was telling Biden that Saddam had no WMDs and Biden didn’t want to hear it and chewed him out for it.

Biden’s 1988 run for the Whitehouse was destroyed because he plagiarised his speeches and his biography. Obama is also given to plagiarising other people’s speeches and falsifying his biography.

Biden’s 1988 campaign ad: “The White House isn’t the place to learn how to deal with international crisis, the balance of power, war and peace, and the economic future of the next generation. A president has got to know the territory.” - Sounds like he’s talking about Obama.

And then Jim Geraghty of NRO offers this with a pretty pink ribbon on top:

On McCain:
Biden, on a post-debate appearance on MSNBC, October 30, 2007: “The only guy on the other side who’s qualified is John McCain.”

Biden appearing on The Daily Show, August 2, 2005: “John McCain is a personal friend, a great friend, and I would be honored to run with or against John McCain, because I think the country would be better off, be well off no matter who…”

On Meet the Press, November 27, 2005: “I’ve been calling for more troops for over two years, along with John McCain and others subsequent to my saying that.”

On Obama:
Reacting to an Obama speech on counterterrorism, August 1, 2007: “‘Look, the truth is the four major things he called for, well, hell that’s what I called for,’ Biden said today on MSNBC’s Hardball, echoing comments he made earlier in the day at an event promoting his book at the National Press Club. Biden added, ‘I’m glad he’s talking about these things.’”

Also that day, the Biden campaign issued a release that began, “The Biden for President Campaign today congratulated Sen. Barack Obama for arriving at a number of Sen. Biden’s long-held views on combating al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” That release mocked Obama for asking about the “stunning level of mercury in fish” and asked about a proposal for the U.S. adopt a ban on mercury sales abroad at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

Assessing Obama’s Iraq plan on September 13, 2007: “My impression is [Obama] thinks that if we leave, somehow the Iraqis are going to have an epiphany” of peaceful coexistence among warring sects. “I’ve seen zero evidence of that.”

Speaking to the New York Observer: Biden was equally skeptical — albeit in a slightly more backhanded way — about Mr. Obama. “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

Also from that Observer interview: “But — and the ‘but’ was clearly inevitable — he doubts whether American voters are going to elect ‘a one-term, a guy who has served for four years in the Senate,’ and added: ‘I don’t recall hearing a word from Barack about a plan or a tactic.’”

Around that time, Biden in an interview with the Huffington Post, he assessed Obama and Hillary Clinton: “The more people learn about them (Obama and Hillary) and how they handle the pressure, the more their support will evaporate.”

December 11, 2007: “If Iowans believe campaign funds and celebrity will fix the debacle in Iraq, put the economy on track, and provide health care and education for America’s children, they should support another candidate,” said Biden for President Campaign Manager Luis Navarro. “But I’m confident that Iowans know what I know: our problems will require experience and leadership from Day One. Empty slogans will be no match for proven action on caucus night.”

Also that night, Biden said in a campaign ad, “When this campaign is over, political slogans like ‘experience’ and ‘change’ will mean absolutely nothing. The next president has to act.”

September 26, 2007: Biden for President Campaign Manager Luis Navarro said, “Sen. Obama said he would do everything possible to end the war in Iraq and emphasized the need for a political solution yet he failed to show up to vote for Sen. Biden’s critical amendment to provide a political solution in Iraq.

December 26, 2006: “Frankly, I think I’m more qualified than other candidates, and the issues facing the American public are all in my wheelbarrow.”

On Iraq:
Biden on Meet the Press in 2002, discussing Saddam Hussein: “He’s a long term threat and a short term threat to our national security… “We have no choice but to eliminate the threat. This is a guy who is an extreme danger to the world.”

Biden on Meet the Press in 2002: “Saddam must be dislodged from his weapons or dislodged from power.”

Biden on Meet the Press in 2007, on Hussein’s WMDs: “Well, the point is, it turned out they didn’t, but everyone in the world thought he had them. The weapons inspectors said he had them. He catalogued — they catalogued them. This was not some, some Cheney, you know, pipe dream. This was, in fact, catalogued.”

Biden, on Obama’s Iraq plan in August 2007: “I don’t want [my son] going [to Iraq],” Delaware Sen. Joe Biden said from the campaign trail Wednesday, according to a report on Radio Iowa. “But I tell you what, I don’t want my grandson or my granddaughters going back in 15 years and so how we leave makes a big difference.” Biden criticized Democratic rivals such as Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama who have voted against Iraq funding bills to try to pressure President Bush to end the war. “There’s no political point worth my son’s life,” Biden said, according to Radio Iowa. “There’s no political point worth anybody’s life out there. None.”

Biden on Meet the Press, April 29, 2007: “The threat [Saddam Hussein] presented was that, if Saddam was left unfettered, which I said during that period, for the next five years with sanctions lifted and billions of dollars into his coffers, then I believed he had the ability to acquire a tactical nuclear weapon — not by building it, by purchasing it. I also believed he was a threat in that he was — every single solitary U.N. resolution which he agreed to abide by, which was the equivalent of a peace agreement at the United Nations, after he got out of — after we kicked him out of Kuwait, he was violating. Now, the rules of the road either mean something or they don’t. The international community says “We’re going to enforce the sanctions we placed” or not. And what was the international community doing? The international community was weakening. They were pulling away.”

Biden to the Brookings Institution in 2005: “We can call it quits and withdraw from Iraq. I think that would be a gigantic mistake. Or we can set a deadline for pulling out, which I fear will only encourage our enemies to wait us out — equally a mistake.”

Analyzing the surge on Meet the Press, September 9, 2007: “I mean, the truth of the matter is that, that the — America’s — this administration’s policy and the surge are a failure, and that the surge, which was supposed to stop sectarian violence and — long enough to give political reconciliation, there’s been no political reconciliation… The reality is that, although there has been some mild progress on the security front, there is, in fact, no, no real security in Baghdad and/or in Anbar province, where I was, dealing with the most serious problem, sectarian violence. Sectarian violence is as strong and as solid and as serious a problem as it was before the surge started.”

Biden in October of 2002: “We must be clear with the American people that we are committing to Iraq for the long haul; not just the day after, but the decade after.”

On Meet the Press, January 7, 2007, assessing the proposal of a surge of troops to Iraq: “If he surges another 20, 30, or whatever number he’s going to, into Baghdad, it’ll be a tragic mistake, in my view, but, as a practical matter, there’s no way to say, ‘Mr. President, stop.’”

On Meet the Press, November 27, 2005: “Unless we fundamentally change the rotation dates and fundamentally change how many members of the National Guard we’re calling up, it’ll be virtually impossible to maintain 150,000 folks this year.” (The number of troops in Iraq peaked at 162,000 in August 2007, during the surge.)

And one more for good measure from (TNR) by Michael Crowley (10-22-01):

Rhetorical Question

[ ... ]

Speech is at once Biden’s great strength and his great weakness. As a presidential candidate in 1987 he brought audiences to tears with his stump speeches about reclaiming the lost dream of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Then his campaign imploded when he was caught plagiarizing from British Labour Party head Neil Kinnock. On the Senate floor this spring he delivered one of the most powerful Democratic critiques of Bush’s tax cut. “This is about values,” Biden thundered. “I have never had it so starkly and honestly stated on this floor. What do we value as Americans?” And when Biden spoke before a meeting of Democratic senators shortly after the September 11 attacks, to explain the importance of the use-of-force authorization he had helped craft, he received a standing ovation. Afterward California Senator Barbara Boxer approached Biden to say, “Thank God you’re here.”

Biden’s admirers spin his undisciplined chatter as a kind of John McCain-esque straight talk. Their shining example is the way, in 1992, Biden told Slobodan Milosevic to his face that he was “a damned war criminal and should be tried as one.” Washington insiders “like people to speak in this kind of thought-speak where you talk for three minutes and don’t say anything,” says his former longtime chief of staff, Ted Kaufman. “That’s not Joe Biden.”

But Biden’s mouth does him as much harm as good. ” He gives Castro-length speeches,” says one exasperated Senate staffer. In Democratic caucus meetings, he is famous for declaring, “I’ll be brief,” and then talking the room into a stupor. (Biden’s colleagues have been known to burst into laughter when he makes that promise.) People who know Biden also warn that his loose talk often reflects muddled thinking. In his classic study of the 1988 presidential candidates, What It Takes, Richard Ben Cramer wrote, “Joe often didn’t know what he thought until he had to say it.” In one recent committee debate, recalls an observer, Biden delivered a rambling explanation of his opposition to a foreign aid amendment, by the end of which he had seemed to talk himself out of his original position.

By straying off-message, Biden doesn’t only cause headaches for himself, but occasionally for others as well. When Congress and the Clinton administration were trying to force reforms at the United Nations last year, the United States held up nearly $1 billion in back dues payments as leverage. In a visit to the General Assembly soon afterwards, Biden suggested that America’s demands might be negotiable–a position he had not cleared with his Senate colleagues nor with a startled UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.

There’s also the simple matter of tone. Biden’s affable vernacular works well for partisan politics, but not for war and peace. During nato’s bombing campaign of Serbia two years ago, Biden cheerfully declared on CBS that “Slobodan Milosevic is getting the living hell kicked out of him.” After implying on Fox News in 1999 that Boris Yeltsin was not “in charge” of Russia, Biden was pressed by host Tony Snow on why the United States continued to deal with him. “Well, you’ve got to talk to somebody,” Biden replied. “My staff talks to me and sometimes I’m not in charge. But all kidding aside…”

Biden himself seems to worry that people aren’t taking him seriously. In an odd verbal tic, he routinely interrupts himself to offer the assurance that he’s “not being facetious.” He opened his May 17 tax cut speech by saying: “I find this the single most fascinating debate I have been involved in in 28 years. I sincerely do. It is not a joke. I am not being facetious.” Or when the anti-terrorism bill came up on CNN’s “Crossfire” last month: “In full disclosure, I wrote that bill. I’m not being facetious.” When “Crossfire” host Bill Press offered Biden the avuncular assurance that “it’s really a great bill,” Biden pressed on: “No. No. I’m not being facetious. I’m not being facetious when I say that.”

That exchange points to another problem with Biden as a party spokesman. Rather than build up the credentials of a party deeply mistrusted by the public on foreign affairs, Biden often seems more interested in advertising his own accomplishments. In the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Biden did, in fact, champion an anti-terrorism bill similar to the one now before Congress (though it was, as he complains, badly watered down by anti-government conservatives and leftist civil libertarians). And Biden doesn’t let you forget it. “I introduced the terrorism bill in ‘94 that had a lot of these things in it,” he bragged to NBC’s Tim Russert on September 30. When I spent the day with him later that week, Biden mentioned the legislation to me, and to several other reporters he encountered, no fewer than seven times. “When I was chairman in ‘94 I introduced a major antiterrorism bill–back then,” he says in the morning, flashing a knowing grin and pausing for effect. (Never mind that he’s gotten the year wrong.) Back in his office later that afternoon, he brings it up yet again. “I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up was my bill.” You don’t say.

In fact, the only thing Biden likes better than reminding people about his anti-terrorism bill is reminding them that he predicted the September 11 attacks. On September 10 Biden delivered a foreign policy speech to the National Press Club complaining about the administration’s fixation on missile defense. “The real threat comes to this country in the hold of a ship, the belly of a plane, or smuggled into a city in the middle of the night in a vial in a backpack,” Biden said. So give the man credit. Just not as much as he’s been claiming. “Literally as recently as yesterday, I spoke to the National Press Club and talked about the fact it is just as easy to fly from National Airport into the White House as it is to, you know, do the same thing in New York,” Biden told ABC News. Unfortunately Biden said no such thing. His speech didn’t mention National Airport or the White House–or any kamikaze scenario at all.

Brew a hot cup of tea, Gov. and read on …

Maggie/drillanwr and the whole Dollard Community