One of the more underreported ridiculous aspects of Joe Biden's performance last night was his frequent refrain that he was there. He was there, apparently, when he did not, contrary to contemporary records, vote for war resolutions regarding Iraq and Afghanistan, because he felt they were too expensive. He was there when Ronald Reagan hammered out his budgets. He was there when Obama decisively and personally eliminated bin Laden, of course. And because Paul Ryan noted that Jack Kennedy had lowered tax rates and thereby increased revenues, Biden ridiculed Ryan for claiming that he was Jack Kennedy . . . which Ryan had not done.
In fact, it was Biden himself who broke into the Kennedy wardrobe to try on some of Bobby Kennedy's lines in his infamous 1988 Democratic primary debate plagiarism incident, and Biden's problems with plagiarism didn't end there. Nor did Biden's problems with plagiarism begin there.
If that wasn't bad enough, Biden admitted the next day that while in law school he had received an F for a course because he had plagiarized five pages from a published article in a term paper that he submitted. He admitted as well that he had falsely stated that British Labor official Denis Healey had given him the Kinnock tape. (Healey had denied the claim.) And Biden conceded that he had exaggerated in another matter by stating in a speech some years earlier that he had joined sit-ins to desegregate restaurants and movie theaters, and was thus actively involved in the civil rights movement. He protested, his press secretary clarified, "to desegregate one restaurant and one movie theater." The latter two of these fibs were small potatoes by any reckoning, but in the context of other acts of dishonesty, they helped to form a bigger picture.
For all these disclosures, Biden remained unbowed. "I'm in the race to stay, I'm in the race to win, and here I come," he declared. That meant, of course, that his days were numbered. Newsweek soon reported on a C-SPAN videotape from the previous April that showed Biden berating a heckler at a campaign stop. While lashing out at the audience member, Biden defended his academic credentials by inflating them, in a fashion that was notably unbecoming and petty for a presidential candidate.
"I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect," Biden sniped at the voter. "I went to law school on a full academic scholarship." That claim was false, as was another claim, made in the same rant, that he graduated in the top half of his law-school class. Biden wrongly stated, too, that he had earned three undergraduate degrees, when in fact he had earned one—a double major in history and political science. Another round of press inquiries followed, and Biden finally withdrew from the race on Sept. 23.
The sheer number and extent of Biden's fibs, distortions, and plagiarisms struck many observers at the time as worrisome, to say the least. While a media feeding frenzy (a term popularized in the 1988 campaign) always creates an unseemly air of hysteria, Biden deserved the scrutiny he received. Quitting the race was the right thing to do.
Twenty-one years on, how much should Biden's past behavior matter? In and of itself, the plagiarism episode shouldn't automatically disqualify Biden from regaining favor and credibility, especially if in the intervening two decades he's not done more of the same, as seems to be the case. But no one has looked into it. The press should give his record since 1988 a thorough vetting. It's worth knowing whether the odds-on favorite to be our next vice president has truly reformed himself of behavior that can often be the mark of a deeply troubled soul.
Certainly, Biden hoped that four years of service to the Obama administration had made those memories go away, but last night's bizarre debate performance opened them up again, just as his claim that the administration's continually revised stories about Benghazi were the result of bad information handed to them by the intelligence services, and his strange claim that the administration was unaware that people at and involved with the Benghazi embassy had requested more security before they began yammering about the Innocence of Muslims YouTube trailer. The State Department is a portion of the Executive Branch. It's unlikely the President or Vice-President knew anything about the requests for more security at the time of the attack, especially given the President's habit of blowing off security briefings, but they certainly should have known about those requests and the repeated threats by the time they started blaming matters on the video.
Yesterday, Stephanie Cutter brought down a firestorm of criticism for saying that nobody would be so focused on the Benghazi matter if Romney and Ryan weren't working it over on the campaign trail, when in fact Romney and Ryan hadn't really pounded that drum as much of their supporters wished they had. The decisions that led to the disaster were by and large political decisions, and certainly the White House's and State Department's prevarications as to what sparked the attacks and what transpired to result in the deaths of four Americans were politically motivated. For Cutter to claim that Romney and Ryan were guilty of 'politicizing' the matter was absurd. It was always already politicized. It certainly became far more politicized when the administration tried to instrumentalize the craptasm their misassessments of threat and general incompetent disinterest had helped create in order to push for Muslim-friendly limitations on free speech, under the guise of protecting against insults directed at any religion.
Joe Biden knows malarkey. Well, he should. He was often there when it was committed.
Given his history, though, his infomercial moments of talking beyond the moderator to the audience, telling them that they should trust him and not that snake-oil selling Ryan, because he is made of truth, strained credulity far beyond the breaking point.
Starless on October 13, 2012 at 9:30 am said:
There's one thing I'm certain about and that's that it should be clear to everyone everywhere that a politician who uses his own IQ as some sort of appeal to authority is a self-important idiot.
KingShamus on October 13, 2012 at 1:25 pm said:
I'm
Neil KinnockJoe Biden And I Approve This Grandstanding Dickbaggery.The two biggest stories coming out of the debate are the Obama Administration's unending ever-shifting Benghazi gyrations and Joe Biden's toothy facial gesticulations. Barry Soetero now looks both less competent on foreign policy and more deranged when it comes to picking his subordinates. Paul Ryan won it just by showing up and looking sober.
And yeah, Biden bellowing out 'Now you're John Kennedy!!!!!1111!!!!!!!111eleventy!!!!!' rubbed me the wrong way too. Ryan wasn't even kinda comparing himself or Romney to JFK, but Biden was just itching to Quaylize them even when using the line didn't make any sense. That was where Slow Joe most resembled a drunk know-it-all talking himself right into a bar fight. It looked even more obnoxious then the rest of Biden's performance.
Starless on October 13, 2012 at 1:47 pm said:
We know how well Lloyd Bentsen's cheap JFK shot worked out for the Fighting Dukaki. And it was not in the least spontaneous:
Joe Winpisinger on October 14, 2012 at 10:00 am said:
I cannot believe that this is the first place I have read about the cheap rip off of a famous debate line… That was horrible and shows that we are still slumbering in many respects in this nation… How does he get away with that?
Wombat_socho on October 13, 2012 at 6:45 pm said:
Congratulations to Robert McCain’s sons for shooting out that window at Colorado Obama headquarters. Bang!!
jefferson101 on October 13, 2012 at 7:28 pm said:
I'm not congratulating anyone who doesn't use a full-automatic weapon to do that sort of thing. (Well, maybe not even then, but if you are going to take halfway measures, you might as well stay home anyway, right?)
Besides that, I don't trust Stacy on firearms much in the first place. I doubt that his kids have any non-military experience with them. Nice try, Troll!
jefferson101 on October 13, 2012 at 8:50 pm said:
Oh, yeah….just for the record.
Back in 2008, someone shot up an Obama campaign office in Denver, IIRC. I also remember it being a disgruntled Obama Campaign employee who was mad because he thought he didn't get paid enough.
So there's that, too.
Dan Collins on October 13, 2012 at 9:08 pm said:
Yeah, it was a Dem GOTV worker who did that shit .
Starless on October 13, 2012 at 9:56 pm said:
As I recall, every single case of violence and mayhem perpetrated against Dems that election was a false flag operation. Not to mention every single appearance of Hitleria at TEA Party gatherings in the following years.
And now we've got this guy.