Can you imagine that in the dark days of the Bush Administration, AP had ran an article on how the Vice President was redefining the role of his office and primarily interviewed political aides to the then-President and their supporters and read like it had been drafted in the West Wing, with one critical quote added in for “balance.”

Well, take a gander at this puff piece on Joe Biden which lead the news on Yahoo!’s main page Wednesday night.  Here’s the toughest criticism of the Delaware Democrat we get.

South Carolina Comptroller Richard Eckstrom, who oversees stimulus spending in his state, says Biden may be “giving it all he’s got,” but states haven’t been given the tools they need to meet federal requirements, in particular reporting rules that arrived without money to help states meet them.

“Nebulous Washington didn’t think this one through very well,” Eckstrom said.

No mention of how his comments on jobs* being created are at odds with increasing job losses across the country.  No mention of fraud in the distribution the “stimulus” funds he oversees.  Only that one mention above of delays in the distribution of transportation funds. An attempt to downplay his gaffes as if they’re just representative of his honesty and bluntness.

No mention of how he’s gotten nearly every foreign policy issue wrong (not to mention most domestic ones) over the course of his 36-year tenure in the seat.  No tough questions asking if he’s learned from his mistakes.  Instead, we just learn that “Biden’s vice presidency is shaping up as a mix of his two Democratic predecessors, two of the most influential vice presidents after Cheney.”

Guess if your name isn’t Cheney and you serve under Obama, then there’s no need for tough criticism.

————–

*You  know that “three-letter word” about “the number one job facing the middle class.”

UPDATE:  This piece makes me wonder if the AP functions as the research and communications arm of the Obama White House (to borrow an expression from the President’s Communications Director).

Health and safety concerns.

On Tuesday, when I was identified Children’s Hospital/Los Angeles as one my charitable donations to my tax guy, he, recalling my past returns, commented that I always support that international leader in pediatrics.  I always support them, I replied, because of the institution’s sterling reputation.

He then related how when his nephew was suffering from a complicated respiratory problem, he was airlifted there and received extraordinary care.  He’s doing fine today.  It made me feel good to hear an example of the good work that one of “my” charities does.

Because I would be getting back a little more from the feds than I had anticipated, when I returned home to find a solicitation from the hospital in my pile of mail to be sorted, I instantly cut them a check.  I’m sure I’m not alone.  I’m sure countless other Americans, when getting money back, are equally generous.  If not more so.

Unless of course they’re the Vice President of the United States.  On Tuesday, I gave more to Children’s Hospital than the total amount Joe Biden gave to charitable organizations in 1998 or 1999 on an adjusted gross income considerably less than his (via Volokh via Glenn).

You’d think somebody so generous with other people’s money would be more generous with his own.

While Biden has given more in recent year than he has in years past, he gave less than $2,000 last year on an income greater than $250,000.  According to the New York Times, “the White House said the Bidens have made additional donations to charity not listed on the returns.“  And the White House hosted a Fiscal Responsibility Summit only days after the president signed a near-trillion dollar “stimulus,” further boosting the deficit he derided on the campaign trail.

There are many causes worthy of our support, particularly in these tough times.  I hope you’ll join me in supporting Children’s Hospital/Los Angeles.  And when you do so, maybe write the Vice President and ask him to support this great facility as well, without dipping into our tax dollars to do so.

ADDENDUM:  This is not the first time I blogged on this.  The last time I did so, several of our readers commented that they too gave more in charity than does the Vice President.

I can’t remember where it was, nor the exact key words to use in a search, but I recall once reading about the “truth in a lie.”  That the words (of a lie) may not be true, but they reveal a truth about the person speaking them and/or the situation he is facing.

Someone in Hollywood who lies about her age understands a truth about the town’s main industry that people here prize youth over experience.  Someone who lies about working out (saying he does when he doesn’t) reveals an insecurity about his mostly sedentary status.  Or, as in the case, of one guy with whom I was fixed up, an intention to work out (or so he claimed).

With that in mind, we could have a field day investigating the Vice President’s fabrications. As you may recall (something the MSM ignored), Bush Administration officials denied claims by Joe Biden that, in private meetings earlier this decade with the then-President Bush, the then-Delaware Senator castigated the Republican.

The truth in his lies?

Well, we can see the Vice President’s sense of self-importance, making himself out to be a bold man who speaks truth to power.  

And we all see a truth about our media-political culture; Biden thought he could score points by bashing Bush.  You can still ingratiate yourself to some in political polite society by attacking the former President.

And of course, we have one more example of officials of this Administration trashing the previous one, particularly the man who led it.  I’m still waiting for our critics to provide examples of either then-President Bush or then-Vice President Cheney personally trashing the Clintons (or the Gores) in their first three months in office.

So, Biden’s lies are really revealing, about himself, the prevailing culture in Washington and his Administration.

It seemed a strange serendipity of circumstances that barely twenty-four hours after blogging about a journalism school honoring Katie Couric for biased coverage of Sarah Palin, I would discover the media ignoring the latest Joe Biden fabrication.

As I wrote last fall:

Joe Biden makes more gaffes the average week than Sarah Palin made in the entire campaign.  Take out . . . 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.”

While, during the campaign, the media made much of Biden’s experience, they ignored that of his rival for the Vice Presidency

Let me post a video I had posted last fall where former House Speaker Newt Gingrich comments on the biased coverage of the Alaska Governor and speculates that “to the best of [his] knowledge there has been a single question by an elite television journalist about [Palin's] actual career in Alaska”

Just as the media ignored Sarah Palin’s accomplishments, they ignore Biden’s fabrications.

They root into every detail of Palin’s private family life, even into the peccadilloes of her daughter’s ex-fiancé’s mother.  And while they not only rightfully ignore gossip about Biden’s family, they fail and fail yet again to highlight his own misunderstandings of issues and misrepresentations of fact.

The media did not cover Sarah Palin as they normally would cover an accomplished politician, but instead as an attractive celebrity.  And Biden, well, Biden, they treat as a fading celebrity whose reputation they are trying to protect.  They just don’t find his gaffes newsworthy.  It might upset the image of the wise senior statesman.

Yet, the more they ignore his miscues, the more evidence we accumulate of their bias.  They head to Wasilla to root around for dirt on Palin, yet when “dirt” on Biden emerges by the mere fact of him opening his mouth in front of a camera, they don’t even bother to check the tape.

Just by reviewing such tapes, they’d have an endless stream of stories.  And they wouldn’t need pay for airfare to the Last Frontier or weather the inconvenience of a long journey clear across the continent.

UPDATE:  Well Yahoo! did pick the story up (from Politico), but note how they frame it:  Rove: Biden a ‘blowhard’ and ‘liar’.  They make it as much about who’s calling the Vice President a liar as they do about the Democrat’s latest misrepresentation.  Given how regularly Biden makes things up, you’d think such “news” outlets at Yahoo! would actually investigate this rather than report it as the contention of a conservative pundit/political strategist.

While thinking about Joe Biden in contemplating my previous post, it struck me how hard the MSM tries to portray the Vice President in a positive light. They give short shrift to his past gaffes and errors of judgment. The former Delaware Senator has made gaffes that were he a Republican would have earned him the opprobrium of the chattering classes. He has been wrong about nearly every foreign policy issue in his 36-year Senate tenure.

Recall, this is the guy who told Katie Couric, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”

At least when Sarah Palin was talking to the same news anchor, she admitted what she didn’t know (and got into trouble for that).  By contrast, Biden showed that he was clueless about U.S. history and the record of the most celebrated president of his party.

If the MSM devoted one-third the time to investigating Biden’s public statements as they did to reporting the private life of Sarah Palin’s family, they’d have ten times the material.

When, in 2001, the media made much of Jenna Bush’s underage drinking, did you tell them to tone it done and respect the privacy of the then-president’s daughter?

When, in 2004, the presidential and vice-presidential nominees of your party in respective debates made an issue of the sexuality of the then-Vice President’s daughter, did you fault them for doing so?

When, in the 2008 presidential campaign, the media made much of the indiscretions of the daughter of your rival for the second highest office in the land, did you tell them to cool it?

Did, in that same campaign, you ever fault New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor for contacting, through Facebook, the friends of the youngest daughter of then-Republican presidential candidate John McCain to get dirt on his wife?

If you answered, “Yes,” to any of these questions, then you have grounds to criticize anyone who would publicize your daughter’s private life.

As I’ve said before, her life should remain private.  She is not the public figure.  You are.  And you have been for nearly four decades now.  And during that time, the media has made much of the private lives of family members of politicians of both parties, but mostly of those on the Republican side of the aisle.

Did you ever stand up for your partisan rivals when the media made much of their families’ private lives to the anticipated advantage of your party?

Now that some in the media are looking into your daughter’s indiscretions, maybe you can use that snooping to the greater benefit of the nation you serve.  You could help us learn the lesson Achilles did when he recognized the sadness of his greatest rival’s father.

(more…)

Welcome Instapundit Readers! While you’re here, you might want to check my followup to this post wherein I pose some questions and offer some advice to the Vice President.

During last fall’s presidential campaign, Barney Frank likely served as an inspiration to some bloggers eager to score points with the far left when he became one of “the first Democrats to publicly say Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s family background, including the pregnancy of her unwed teenage daughter, should be fair game for campaign discussion.”

If the daughter of a candidate for Vice President is “fair game” for campaign discussion, it follows that the daughter of the sitting Vice President should be “fair game” for political discussion.

Apparently the mainstream media doesn’t think so.

Starting yesterday, Drudge has been linking a number of articles reporting that a “‘friend’ of Vice President Joseph Biden’s daughter, Ashley, is attempting to hawk a videotape that he claims shows her snorting cocaine at a house party this month in Delaware.”  Yet, except for a few New York area papers (Newsday, NY Post, NY Daily News), the “old media” have not picked up on this story.

In an ideal world, this wouldn’t, indeed, likely shouldn’t be news.  But, it seems that whenever the child of a Republican politician is caught up in a scandal, the MSM, following the lead of Democrats like Frank, calls their private lives “fair game.”  Recall how quickly they were in May and June of 2001 to jump on the story of Jenna Bush’s underage drinking escapade.

The story made the cover of People magazine.  And this was drinking not drugs.

Maybe it’s time for Barney to start bullying them, holding them to the standard he set for Biden’s rival for the Vice-Presidency last fall.

Despite the president’s difficult first dozen days in office, given his intelligence and political gifts, he could change course should the national interest require such a shift. With his charisma and rhetorical gifs (when speaking from prepared text), he could more easily communicate that change.

I am less confident of his deputy’s ability to lead. The more I watch Joe Biden, the more I pray for the president’s health. He doesn’t seem to have ever had an original thought, serving more as a barometer of liberal conventional wisdom than anything else. Whatever his Democratic peers believe he does too.

People confuse his experience with wisdom, as if just because he’s been in the Senate for so long, chairing two committees, he must necessarily have a deep understanding of the way the world works. Well, he does know the way Washington works.  And the way its winds blow.

Just look at how he treats his predecessor, calling the distinguished Wyomingite “one of the most dangerous vice presidents.” He didn’t say this because he believed it to be so, but because it is the conventional wisdom of his political peers and their allies among the punditry and in the MSM.*

While Biden served on the Senate Foreign Relations for decades, he’s been wrong on nearly every significant foreign policy issue since he first took office.  In public appearances, he seems especially obsequious to the president, kind of like the geeky kid in high school, all of a sudden becoming the head jock’s right-hand man.

Let us hope Obama senior adviser David Axelrod was just being politic when he said Biden’s “insight and experience dwarf any minor gaffe or misstep.“  Because the only insight the vice president’s gained for that experience is that Democrats look smart in Washington when they repeat the conventional wisdom of theirpartisan peers.

* (more…)

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)