I finally had the chance to watch the HBO Miniseries John Adams which I bought on DVD several months ago. As I watched the episode when John Adams (Paul Giamatti) began service as the nation’s first Vice President, it struck me that Joe Biden would be our next Vice President.
From a great, but flawed man to the master of the gaffe.
When not thinking of how the Delaware Democrat has been so spectucularly wrong about nearly every foreign policy issue during his six terms in the Senate, I was impressed with the performances in the mini-series. I only regret that the filmmakers did not choose to explore the real depth of the friendship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
They all but left it out of the scenes set in Philadelphia during the Second Continental Congress. There, the two very different men forged a bond which would last until Adams’ term as president, reviving only in a correpondence after the Virginian left the White House.
Everyone knows the story of Adams leaving Washington in a tiff before Jefferson’s inaugural in March 1801. And, then both of them dying on the same day, July 4 1826. Fifty years to the day of the founding of the country. I believe the last thing that the 90 year-old Adams said was that he regretted that Jefferson had out-lived him. But he did not know that Jefferson was to die on the same day, too. The only thing that I can remember was the horrid bit of legislation that passed during Adams’ presidency, the alien and sedition act……………..I will have to rent the movie to fill-in some gaps. Jefferson was no saint when it came running a campaign.
You’re about 34 years too late on the “how far we’ve fallen” comment – love how conservatives conveniently forget Nixon and Watergate. By the way, any one notice the newest figures out showing that Bush’s approval ratings are even lower than Nixon’s? Not exactly in a position from which to whack so easily on Biden.
You’re about 34 years too late on the “how far we’ve fallen” comment – love how conservatives conveniently forget Nixon and Watergate. By the way, any one notice the newest figures out showing that Bush’s approval ratings are even lower than Nixon’s? Not exactly in a position from which to whack so easily on Biden.
Sure it is Kevin, Harry Truman and Abraham Lincoln were also both more unpopular than Nixon. Nixon was unpopular for corruption, Lincoln, Truman and Bush are all unpopular for leading the country in a direction it did not want to go.
Meanwhile, Biden is just an incredibly stupid man who is wrong on everything from what Article I of the constitution does, the role of the VP to defunding our allies in Vietnam and opposing Reagan’s defeat of the Soviet Union. Not only that, as head of the senate judiciary committee who is really responsible for introducing rank partisanship into the confirmation process, Biden is the architect of some of the deepest divisions that America suffers from today.
Nixon was not the first corrupt politician in the oval office, nor will he be the last (one takes up residence there on January 20 as a matter of fact) but Joe Biden is truly the first bonafide asshat to ever occupy one of the top two slots in an administration.
Man, Pelosi in the House, Reid in the Senate, and Biden as VP! Lord, help us. Bush’s IQ is higher than all three of those combined!
Zoiks! Filtered again!
Actually Kevin, President Nixon set the standard for decency when he didn’t contest the 1960 election results, the Dailey machine ad LBJ’s tactics in TX. He felt the country needed to rally behind a leader and not tear itself apart in fighting.
Look at 2004. How many Republicans tactfully conceeded? How many Democrats fought on?
Besides my governor would say this about Watergate, were it a Democrat:
Livewire beat me to it: in 2000, Al Gore proved conclusively that he had less class and less interest in the good of the nation than… Richard Milhous Nixon.
Adams last words are said to have been “Thomas Jefferson survives…”. though records indicate Jefferson a few hours before Adams took his last breath.
The McCullugh (sp) book goes into A & J’s friendship, and tumult, in detail. I still am dying to read the Adams / Jefferson letters they wrote during the fourteen years as they became elder statesmen. Adams often tried to goad Mr. J into admitting to mistakes, and Jefferson would have none of it.
…though records indicate Jefferson died a few hours before Adams took his last breath.
4: Yeah, your rhetoric that Obama is already corrupt ranks right up there with Rush’s recent comments that the current recession is the fault of Obama are both beyond laughable. The fall of the Soviet Union was not due to Reagan; Reagan was lucky enough to be in office at the time when the Soviet economic system was falling apart and their only avenue to survival was to open to the west. Communism was a proven failure, but its nonsense to believe that Reagan’s “tear down that wall” speech was the sole reason for the fall of communism.
6: Yes, and what standard did he set in 1972-74 with his criminal actions? You cannot point back 12 years to Nixon’s “classiness” when he was solely responsible for bringing down the presidency. Events like the Saturday Night Massacre proved what a real “classy” guy Nixon truly was.
Ah Kevin Kevin Kevin,
He -still- was more classy than Al Gore, Mary Jo Kilroy, Al Franken, that govenour of Washington, and yes, Mr. “The seas will stop rising and the glaciers will return” himself.
Besides, Ted Strickland’s comment would -still- apply to Nixon. I’ll put him as classier thatn President Clinton, at least Nixon resigned prior to impeachment.
You don’t remember 2000, how the market went wonky every time AlGore filed something? Elections -do- affect the market. And who’s #3 on the list of contribution recievers from Fannie Mae? Hint, he’s the guy who hired for his chief of staff the man who was in charge of Fannie Mae when it was found to be cooking the books.
Kevin,
You really are a joke. No one said it was Reagan’s “tear down this wall” speech that caused the Soviet Union to collapse. It was Reagan’s policies that caused the Soviet Union to collapse — from escalating the arms race, forcing the Soviets to increase their military spending, to aiding the Muhajadeen in Afghanistan, to cutting the flow of new technologies into the USSR, limiting soviet natural gas exports, and causing a drastic fall in the price of oil from the highs of the Carter era, SDI, just for starters — policies that Joe Biden, and all the liberal Democrats opposed.
Oh and regarding Obama’s corruption:
1. He comes from perhaps the nations most corrupt political machine, Daly’s Chicago.
2. His previous 2 political opponents both coincidentally had their divorce records unsealed in an, until then, unprecedented move, in notoriously corrupt Democrat Chicago.
3. He paid less than market value for his mansion, which was purchased in a deal by the now convicted felon, Tony Rezko, who bought the property adjacent to it for more than market value.
4. His wife got a staggering $200,000 raise at the hospital to which Obama sent millions in earmarks.
5. In just two years, he became the number two all-time recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and STILL has the same disgraced Fannie Mae executives advising him, despite the public statements he gave about them no longer advising him.
6. He has now appointed Rahm Immanuel, also a Fannie Mae executive, as his Chief of Staff.
7. Jamie Gorelick, who is responsible for raising “the wall” that prevented the FBI and CIA from talking to one another and thus prevented them from catching the 9/11 plot, and who did so in order to prevent discovery of the illegal foreign campaign donations Al Gore and the Clintons were soliciting — and who was also a Fannie Mae fatcat who destroyed that institution so she could pocket over $25 million in self-awarded bonuses — THAT Jamie Gorelick is now said to be at the top of his short list for his Attorney General.
8. He was caught red-handed hiding and then lying about an $820,000 payment to ACORN who is in turn under criminal investigation in half the states in the nation.
9. He took the unprecedented step of moving his campaign headquarters out of DC to, you guessed it! — notoriously corrupt Chicago.
10. Every single dollar of the billions in earmarks he secured went to pay off people who had done him favors.
11. “Card Check” which Democrats have given an Orwellian name along the lines of “the employee freedom act” or something similar is at the top of Obama’s and the Democrats agenda. Thats where they take away the right of employess to a secret ballot
in order to pay back the unions which paid them billions in campaign contributions
..and that’s only what I can think of off the top of my head, I’m sure I’m forgetting a great deal more.
Come to think of it, its no wonder Democrats are again talking about moving forward with yet more investigations of the Bush administration (which they have already investigated over 300 times and come up with NOTHING) …they want to be able to claim any calls for investigating Obama are just retaliatory.
Seriously, how can you support such criminals?
Filtered. 🙁
The worst VP ever?–it would be hard to top Aaron Burr. How about Andrew Johnson–a vain incompetent? Spiro Agnew–an out-and-out crook? Biden is a dunce (and a tad amiable) but I’d hesitate calling him the worst, although the bar was lowered considerably. Since the selection of Gerald Ford, the vetting process has taken on a more serious tone. Biden’s selection, it seems to me, was a step backwards to the more traditional “party hack” selection criteria that brought us Lyndon Johnson and Agnew.