I am looking forward to a VP debate, if they have one this year. Biden is pretty good on his feet, and he can speak pretty plainly and clearly, as bespeaks his working class background.
Here's how Biden responded to some typical nonsense from Bush, when, speaking before the Knesset, Bush said that “some people” believe the United States “should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along."
"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
Here's Biden's response:
“This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset ... and make this kind of ridiculous statement.”
Democrats have interpreted the comments as an attack on Sen. Barack Obama, and Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the president was out of line.
“
He is the guy who has weakened us,” he said. “
He has increased the number of terrorists in the world. It is
his policies that have produced this vulnerability that the U.S. has. It’s his [own] intelligence community [that] has pointed this out, not me.”
Biden noted that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have both suggested that the United States ought to find a way to talk more with its enemies.
"If he thinks this is appeasement, is he going to come back and fire his own cabinet?” Biden asked. “Is he going to fire Condi Rice?”
Yep. Looking forward to the VP debates.
To somewhat balance Reaganite's comments, here's an analysis by Mark Halperin from earlier this week:
"Biden is deeply thoughtful, serious, passionate, experienced, highly knowledgeable, and incredibly sensible and clear when talking about major issues. He has a vast and creative understanding of politics and policy, a sharp mind, and a sincere heart. He's totally ready to be president. Together, Obama and Biden would represent the best of the last 30 years of the Democratic Party, and the hope for the next 30.
"Biden may be a ridiculous, overbearing blowhard, and he'll doubtless make foolish blunders and imprudent comments if he's on the ticket, but he'd still be an excellent campaigner, surrogate, and debater. He'd be thrilled at the prospect of being vice president (his own aspirations aside), and grateful and proud to have been chosen -- he'd work hard to make Obama look good, and not deliberately outshine him -- plus the chemistry will be appealing, and they genuinely like and respect each other, which will be winningly apparent.
"Also, America [Reaganites excluded, I guess] is no longer a place where citizens care about plagiarism or hair plugs. A Biden pick would immediately elevate Obama's gravitas, give him a semblance of humility, delight the media, and reassure the nation that a grownup is involved. Democrats would be simultaneously relieved and apprehensive, but they'd be pleased with the choice overall. Plus, Biden is Catholic, is a Washington insider in a good way (a hardworking man of the people unchanged by three decades inside the Beltway), and has an endearingly tragic history with a happy ending."
From: thepage.time.com/memo-from-x-to-barack-obama-about-biden/
