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Who, may you ask, is my favorite Vice Presidential Candidate?

No it’s not Sarah Palin.  Palin is exciting the Republican Party base, and although she has made a few gaffes to the press, they have not been particularly hilarious ones, nor have they been particularly numerous, but let me tell you about this guy, he’s just a regular Joe:  Joe Biden.

 

How much of a regular Joe is he?  Well unlike most politicians, he’s not afraid of ethnic humor.  Or racism as it’s usually called by the politically correct class.  Jewish jokes?  He’s got a million of them! 

 

The Yeshiva crew team, he said, sent a spy to Cambridge to find out why the Harvard rowers always beat them. The informant called his coach from alongside the river. “He said, ‘They’ve got eight guys rowing and only one yelling!’ “

 

 

Oy that’s funny!

 

Indians?  He’s got that market covered too!

 

“You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”

 

“I’m not joking!”

 

Come on, give yourself some credit!

 

Black jokes?  Decide for yourself.  When speaking about Senator Obama, he said:

 

“The first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

 

Well take that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  Better start bathing more often.

 

OK that’s not the funniest line I’ve ever heard, but it did dish out a lot of cringing.  Still, amazingly, Biden emerged from these brushes relatively unscathed.  Of course some of his gaffes are just misstatements and slips of the tongue.  No one seriously worries that he referred to Barack Obama as Barack America, or constantly confusing Battalions and Brigades.

 

But some are just bizarre, such as when he seemed to be threatening his running mate if Obama tried to take his guns.

 

“…he tries to fool with my Beretta, he’s got a problem.”

“I guarantee you Barack Obama ain’t taking my shotguns, so don’t buy that malarkey,”

 

Although Beretta does make shotguns, something tells me that Biden doesn’t have a Beretta made shotgun.  I’m unsure that he even has shotguns; at least not now.  I suspect the Secret Service probably went into his home and confiscated them.

 

But really there are so many gaffes, I couldn’t even begin to cover them all:  attacking his own attack ads, his helicopter forced down in Afghanistan, Roosevelt’s 1929 TV appearance to the country, claiming Bush sent the Undersecretary of State to Tehran to meet with Iranian officials, claiming the Joint Chief said that we were losing in Iraq… whew!  It just goes on and on!

 

 

Biden had one debate with Gov. Palin.  Oh to have had a few more of those!  Be still my heart!  Now the McCain campaign counts 14 lies; as they call them.  But I’m only interested in a few.

 

“When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.’ Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.”

 

Huh?

 

You could almost swear Biden was on drugs when he said that.  It made no sense, and even Biden fans had to stretch the bounds of credulity to try to make Biden’s statement sound not insane.

 

Or how about this on the role of the Vice President:

 

Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history. The idea he doesn’t realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that’s the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.

And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there’s a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.

The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he’s part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive, and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.

 

 

Article One does mention the Vice President in section two:

Clause 4: The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

Clause 5: The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.

But article one describes the role of the legislative branch, not the executive branch.  In fact, the only specific duties of the Vice President are those mentioned in Article One.   I guess the constitution was not explicit enough for Biden, since he got so much wrong.  This would have been an OK answer coming from Palin, but Palin was actually more correct on the duties of the Vice President than Biden was.  The Vice President can preside over the Senate at any time, not just to break a tie vote.  The question is more, what Vice President would want to?

 

Biden’s extraordinarily dumb answer is made all the more amazing by the fact that he is an attorney by training, and has sat on the Senate Judiciary Committee for over 16 years.  If there has ever been a Vice Presidential candidate more prepared to elaborate on the duties of the Vice President, it should have been Biden.

 

Naturally the media declared Biden the winner of the debate.

 

 

But his biggest boner (to date) was his promise that Obama would be tested within 6 months of being in office:

 

“Mark my words, it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

 

“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate and he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

 

“Gird your loins.”

 

Once again: Huh?

 

Trying to figure out what Biden was trying to say has been great sport over the weekend, but the Obama Biden campaign has decided to dismiss it as “rhetorical flourish.”

 

If Biden were a Republican the talking heads would still be chattering about his crazy statements.  The word erratic would be used towards him rather than John McCain.  There would probably be a few other words used to: crazy. madman, nuts, damaged… I could go on but you get the point.

 

These words won’t be used about Biden though, and in fact, the media hasn’t paid much attention to him at all.  Palin has been the far more interesting Vice Presidential candidate.  Given Biden’s ego, that must be driving him nuts.  Of course, that could be the reason for all of Biden’s crazy statements.  Maybe they are not gaffes after all.  Maybe he is trying to say … LOOK AT MEEEEEEEE!