If the MSM had paid Joe Biden half the attention they paid Sarah Palin during the campaign, there’s no doubt people would be wondering if the soon-to-be-former longtime Delaware Senator were a drag on his party’s ticket.  Remember the stories before the mortgage meltdown that he was going to find an excuse to step down from the Democratic ticket on October 5 to make way for Hillary Clinton?

Joe Biden makes more gaffes the average week than Sarah Palin made in the entire campaign.  Take out just Palin’s interview with Katie Couric, and you could say that Biden made more gaffes per speech than the Alaska Governor made in the entire campaign.  And he had thirty-six years of “experience.”

Now, with McCain campaign aides trashing their soon-to-be former boss’s choice of running mate, Michael Ledeen observes:

The worst of it is that very little attention is devoted to the actual VP-elect, Joe Biden of Delaware, a man with no executive experience, who invents ‘facts’ many times a day, who is the walking definition of narcissist, and who will, for the next four years, be a heartbeat away from the presidency

And that is more frightening to me than the prospect of Sarah Palin in a similar situation.

Last month in Reno, Nevada, Sarah Palin quipped, “The most looming crisis that threatens Obama’s campaign right now is Joe Biden’s next speaking engagement.”  That threat might be greater if the media paid as much attention to Biden’s gaffes as they do to hers.

Just this morning in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee said:

My sister is smart, runs every one of my campaigns, is beautiful. Graduated with honors from college. Is homecoming queen, but shes a — she is what I call a girl-boy growing up, you know what I mean? And I tell you what. Girl-girls are tougher than girl-boys. But theres one important thing I noticed.

Huh?

What’s this guy saying? Can anyone parse this and tell me what he means?

Is a guy who says such things fit to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? Why isn’t this less newsworthy than Palin’s comment about being able to see Russia from the state she governs?

With comments like this, you’d think Democrats would be rushing to vote for John McCain because they question the competence of Barack Obama’s choice of running mate.

Finally, if Sarah Palin had spoken so strangely about gender, the national gay organizations would be lining up to attack her, demand an apology and use it as proof of her bias against gay men, lesbians and transgenders.

Throughout the month of September — and even into October — critics of Sarah Palin have faulted the McCain campaign for sequestering the vice presidential nominee from the meida.  They stuck to their talking point even as facts on the ground changed; the Alaska Governor has become increasingly accessible to the media, more readily taking questions and offering interviews than her opponent for the Vice Presidency.

In his Corner post this morning, Victor Davis Hanson reminds us that, in recent days, it’s not just Joe Biden who’s been sequestered:

I don’t think in my lifetime I have ever witnessed quite a campaign in which the wife of the Presidential candidate has been sequestered lest she voice yet another sweeping generalization that can be rightfully interpreted as denigrating both the American system at large or the values of other Americans; or in which the Vice Presidential candidate has been sequestered from press questioning lest he once again in an interview or an impromptu says something that either is so bizarre that it makes no sense at all or serves as a good argument not to vote for his running mate

So now that the Democrat has been sequestered, where’s the media outrage? Why aren’t those very same critics who faulted the McCain campaign for hiding the Alaska Governor decrying Obama’s campaign for hidin’ Biden?

Read the rest of Hanson’s post and consider his notion of the “faux-wizardly” of the Democrat’s campaign.

It seems his thirty-six years in Washington have inured Joe Biden to the kid-glove treatment Democrats get from the national press corps.

When a reporter asks Republicans tough questions, they see it as par for the course and (usually) don’t complain.  But, when the news media challenge Democrats, they start whining and call their questioners “combative” as the Obama team labeled WFTV’s Barbara West for pressing the Delaware Democrat on his running mate’s rhetoric of redistribution.

The campaign retaliated by refusing to grant interviews to the station for the duration of the campaign.

And now Biden is whining about the treatment he got:

If a man can’t take the heat from a local reporter, how can he stand up to our nation’s adversaries?

Then, he goes on to plea for unity while savaging his political adversaries! Um, Joe, how can you bring people together when you keep accusing the other side of dividing us while ignoring the divisive politics on your own side?  And when you define as “mean” tough questions from an inquisitive reporter?

In his speech last night, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden opened up his ticket not only to attacks on his party’s presidential nominee’s weakness on foreign policy but also to charges that he is (yet again) misrepresenting the historical record.

It seems sometimes when Democrats criticize the president’s foreign policy, they’re recycling talking points from 2005 or 2006.  Or maybe it’s just that they can’t think up new arguments to respond to changing circumstances.

Biden claimed that “our country is less secure and more isolated than at any time in recent history.”  

As the numerous terrorist attacks on US targets during (and immediately after) the Clinton Administration show, that’s hardly the case.  If the Democrat thinks we’re more isolated, he obviously hasn’t been following the election returns in foreign lands over the past three years.

Since German voters rejected Gerhard Schroeder in September 2005, we’ve seen anti-Bush governments voted out in Canada and France while a pro-American Prime Minister, once defeated, has been returned to office in Italy.  And until his reelection earlier this year, that man, Silvio Berluscon had (in 2006) been the only pro-American leader voted out of office in a major industrialized nation since Bush’s reelection in 2004.

In short, Biden’s comment shows how clueless he is in the field where he is supposed to be an expert.  The only reason we’re perceived as isolated in foreign affairs is because the media dwelled on the very public opposition then-French President Jacques Chirac and then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder made to U.S. plans to liberate Iraq, something Biden then supported.

And just as Biden has switched his views on that liberation in response to shifting public opinion, so too did those nations switch their governments in response to public opinion.  Both nations are now led by governments more favorably disposed to the United States of America and with whom the incumbent president has a good working relationship.

As I recounted last month, I have been reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The History of the Lord of the Rings. This morning, reading the third volume of that set, The War of the Ring, I chanced upon a passage (which the author would strike from the final text of The Two Towers) but which serves as much a rebuke of presumptive Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden as it does of the then-somewhat skeptical King Théoden of Rohan:

It is long since you have listened to tales by the fireside . . . , and in that rather than in white hairs you show your age, without increase in wisdom.

Here, Gandalf rebuked the aging king for doubting the truth of ancient tales.

Just as that good king doubted those old tales,  Biden refusing to look at the evidence of his own eyes and learn from history. For over the thirty-six years of this Democrats service in the United States Senate, he has been so spectacularly wrong on nearly every key issue “dealing with foreign affairs and defense:”

• In 1979, he saw the “advent of the ayotallahs” in Iran as an advance of human rights.
• In the 1980s, he opposed Ronald Reagan’s “proactive policy” against the Soviets.
• In 1990, he voted against the First Gulf War in 1990.
• Most recently, he called General David Petraeus “dead flat wrong“ on the “surge.”

If any one of those two was “dead flat wrong,” it wasn’t the general.

While the Delaware Democrat has criticized one of the most successful American military leaders in recent years, he has been much more yielding in dealing with Iran, America’s most aggressive adversary in the Middle East, leading Michael Rubin to comment in today’s Washington Post, “Obama picked Biden for experience, but he might also have considered judgment. When it comes to Iran, Biden could stare down dictators; too bad he blinks.“

Just as experience alone does not mean good judgment, gray hairs do not necessarily mean an increase in wisdom.

It’s says a lot about Barack Obama that he assumed they do when making his choice for Vice President.  Better we should choose someone who has been right about so many international crises over the past quarter-century than someone who was wrong on nearly every key diplomatic issue since his first election to the United States Senate.

If the following statements were made by the Republican VP candidate, you know Barack Obama would be screaming “racism” at the top of his lungs and the Mainstream Media would be having a nuclear-level uproar.   Unfortunately for Barack, these statements were made by his own running mate.

Delaware & The Confederacy:  In November, Biden joked about South Carolina’s Confederate past at a Rotary Club meeting in Columbia after organizers said their Christmas party at the Department of Archives and History would include a chance to see the state’s original copy of the Articles of Secession.
Biden noted Delaware was “a slave state that fought beside the North. That’s only because we couldn’t figure out how to get to the South — there were a couple of other states in the way.”

Biden violating Federal health privacy laws by announcing Barack Obama was tested for AIDS because he is black.

Biden describing Barack Obama’s candidacy:  “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Biden said.

Hey folks, that was just 5 minutes worth of work on Joe Biden’s race-tainted mouth.  And I got all of those nuggets from our friends at the Democratic Underground.

Feel free to send along more Biden-in-Mouth Disease examples, including remarks about gays and lesbians, as we make Joe Biden our next mission in Operation GAOS.

UPDATE:  THIS is the best Andrew Sullivan can do in cheering for Joe Biden?

What he needs is a plucky, fun, free-wheeling attack machine, with the necessary gravitas to express adequate contempt for the Bush administration’s fatally misguided foreign policy without in any way seeming defensive.

Our Short-Term Memory Afflicted Andrew forgets — Biden authorized use of force in Iraq.  Barack wasn’t in the Senate then.

And then there’s this final rousing cheer of glee from Sully about Biden as VP nominee:

I have to say his inability to shut up drives me up the wall. But there’s also an appealing lack of guile to the man; he wears his flaws like his hair-plugs - out and proud.

Not an inspired choice, in my book. But smart and solid - and adult.

Uh, we’ll see about that.   Seems like Obama has picked the liberal-version of Dick Cheney (from a lib’s point of view).

Finally, I defy anyone, anywhere to send me the name and contact information of one single person who woke up this morning, saw the news, and exclaimed in joy: “OMG!   Obama picked BIIIIIIDEN!   Woooo hooo!”  (Biden Senate and campaign workers are exempt from this challenge).  Emails accepted at BRUCE@GayPatriot.org.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)