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Say It Ain’t So, Joe – Sen. Biden’s Subtly Delusional Debate Performance
Guest Column | By Nicholas Guariglia | October 7, 2008
Sen. Joe Biden’s
a funny guy. He likes to tell stories. Sometimes he says he was shot at in Iraq, and has
to later clarify. Sometimes he talks about the time his helicopter was fired on
and forced to land during a trip to Afghanistan, having to clarify yet
again. Sometimes, on rare occasions, if the moon is just right, he might take
entire excerpts from someone else’s speech, and use it as his own.
But his debate
with Gov. Palin produced a whole slew of interesting tidbits and gaffes, which
one could imagine would be bigger news should they have been said by Palin
instead.
1) On whether or
not Sen. Obama said he would meet with Iran’s president Ahmadinejad
without preconditions, Biden said this:
Can I just
clarify this? This is simply not true about Barack Obama. He did not say sit
down with Ahmadinejad. The fact of the matter is, it surprises me that Sen.
McCain doesn’t realize that Ahmadinejad does not control the security apparatus
in Iran.
The theocracy controls the security apparatus, number one.
This is false.
During a Democratic primary debate last year, Sen. Obama was asked “Would you
be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of
your administration in Washington, or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria,
Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea in order to bridge the
gap that divides our countries?” The question was asked by a citizen through a
YouTube video, and as he named off the countries in question, the faces of
Ahmadinejad, Assad, Chavez, Castro, and Kim Jong Il flashed across the screen.
Anderson Cooper
turned to Sen. Obama to answer first, and he responded emphatically by saying,
“I would,” followed by some revisionist history about Reagan-Soviet summits
from the 1980s. He has subsequently reaffirmed that he would meet with
Ahmadinejad personally.
So when Sen.
Obama and Sen. Biden say they meant “preparations” not “preconditions,” don’t
be fooled. Don’t be fooled when they say they meant low-level contacts, not two
presidents meeting face-to-face. Don’t be fooled when they exempt the part that
said this would all happen within the first year of Obama’s presidency.
And don’t be
fooled when they remind us that Ahmadinejad “does not control” things in Iran. We’ve
heard both Sen. Obama and Sen. Biden repeat this line now on multiple
occasions: “The theocracy” controls the country.
This is true. But
who ever implied otherwise? And what point are they making anyway? Is Sen.
Biden implying Sen. Obama would not only meet with Ahmadinejad, but meet with
Ahmadinejad’s masters as well? Are they saying Sen. Obama will meet with the ruling
mullahs like Khamenei, etc. — who are ten times worse then Ahmadinejad — also?
2) On the
Palestinians, Biden said this:
Here’s what the
president said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama
said, “Big mistake. Hamas will win. You’ll legitimize them.” What
happened? Hamas won.
Wrong. Anyone who
knows the first thing about Palestine knows
Hamas does not control the West Bank. Fatah
rules the West Bank. Hamas reigns over the
Gaza Strip. Had Palin said this, it would be national news for the next three
weeks.
In addition, Sen.
Obama didn’t warn about holding Palestinian elections prematurely. In fact, he
liked the idea, saying it was an “opportunity… to consolidate behind a single government.”
Furthermore, if
anyone might have “legitimized” Hamas over the course of the last few years, it
would be Sen. Obama himself, who has gone on record stating Hamas has
“legitimate claims.” Get that? “Legitimate claims.”
Also, Barack’s
former foreign policy advisor Robert Malley, pro-Hamas in his own right,
traveled to meet with leaders of the terrorist group without U.S.
governmental approval, and was forced to resign from the Obama campaign.
It should also be
noted that Hamas subsequently endorsed Sen. Obama and Mr. Hope didn’t seem to
mind. If the Obama campaign really wants to have a discussion about who has
“legitimized” the Jihadist group during the last few years, that’s a debate the
McCain camp should welcome.
3) On drilling
for domestic energy, Biden said:
John McCain voted
20 times against funding alternative energy sources and thinks, I guess, the
only answer is drill, drill, drill. Drill we must, but it will take 10 years
for one drop of oil to come out of any of the wells that are going to begun to
be drilled.
Incorrect.
Throughout his career, Sen. McCain has voted against making it mandatory to use alternative energy. Today, his “only answer” isn’t “drill, drill,
drill.” He supports nuclear energy, which Obama opposes. He supports
clean-coal, which Obama opposes. He also supports every form of alternative
energy that Obama supports as well.
Drilling is
important, too. It will not take a decade to get a drop of oil out of our
wells. This is a complete fallacy. But it doesn’t matter. The mere attempt
at exploring for energy domestically would alter the market’s energy
speculation and bring down the price at the pump more or less immediately. This
is what happened last month when President Bush simply mentioned the idea about drilling for domestic oil: the prices plummeted. This is how markets
work. Sen. Biden either doesn’t understand that or was misleading — or both.
4) Sen. Biden
explained his 2002 vote to authorize the war in Iraq like so:
With regard to Iraq, I
indicated it would be a mistake to — I
gave the president the power. I voted for the power because he said he needed
it not to go to war but to keep the United
States, the UN in line, to keep sanctions on Iraq and not
let them be lifted. (emphasis mine)
Wow. Talk about
dereliction of duty. Note to Sen. Biden: the October 2002 Public Law No:
107-243, for which you voted in favor of, is officially called the
“Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution 2002.” Sen.
Biden gets into talk about prewar diplomacy, and still, six years later, won’t
even admit he voted to authorize the Iraq war.
5) After Gov.
Palin pointed out that Sen. Obama voted to increase taxes on people making as
little as $42,000, Biden responded:
The charge is absolutely
not true. Barack Obama did not vote to raise taxes. The vote she’s referring
to, John McCain voted the exact same way. It was a budget procedural vote. John
McCain voted the same way.
Also false.
McCain did not vote the same way at all. More than once, Sen. Obama voted
in favor of raising taxes on a single taxpayer making just $42,000. McCain
didn’t. It’s a matter of record.
6) When speaking
about tax breaks, Sen. Biden said Americans will pay no more under an Obama
administration than they did under the Reagan administration:
The middle class
is the economic engine. It’s fair. They deserve the tax breaks, not the super
wealthy who are doing pretty well. They don’t need any more tax breaks. And by
the way, they’ll pay no more than they did under Ronald Reagan.
Unless there’s
been some huge overnight change in economic philosophy within the Obama camp,
this claim is false. Sen. Obama’s economic plan is to raise taxes up to 39.5%,
whereas 28% was the highest the tax rates ever were under Reagan. Sen. Obama’s
proposed trillion-dollar spending increase and tax hikes on every aspect of
business will be the largest in American history. Unprecedented; something
this continent has never seen. That’s what he means when he says “change.”
This isn’t
partisan speculation, its Obama’s actual economic plan. Just read his website.
Look at the numbers and do the math.
7) On Bosnia, Sen.
Biden said:
My
recommendations on Bosnia.
I admit I was the first one to recommend it. They saved tens of thousands of
lives. And initially John McCain opposed it along with a lot of other people.
Catching on to a
theme, here? Sen. Biden has a knack for exaggerating the hell out of
everything. During the Democrat primaries this year, his ads more or less
implied he ended the genocide in Bosnia. The truth is more complex and less
self-congratulating: during the early 1990s, Sen. Biden was suspicious about
using ground forces in Bosnia – just like McCain. Later in the decade, Biden
and McCain both supported the intervention together.
8) Sen. Biden
compared the cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars:
Look, we have
spent more money – we spend more money in three weeks on combat in Iraq than we
spent on the entirety of the last seven years… in Afghanistan building that
country. Let me say that again. Three weeks in Iraq; seven years, seven
years or six-and-a-half years in Afghanistan.
What’s he talking
about? We spend about $7 billion every three weeks in Iraq. We’ve spent $172
billion in Afghanistan. He’s off by about 2,000% – he just made these numbers
up out of thin air.
But what kind of
point was he trying to make, anyway? That we’ve spent more in Iraq than in
Afghanistan? Well, I guess you got us on that one, Joe.
Does anyone in
the country think otherwise? Is he saying we should be spending less in Iraq or
more in Afghanistan, or both? One of the reasons we’ve spent less in
Afghanistan is because we have NATO allies there, taking on much of the cost.
Isn’t that what Biden wanted in Iraq to begin with, more allies?
Iraq is a much
larger war with hundreds of thousands of more combatants; an urban metropolis,
the hub of the Middle East’s geopolitics and the global economy; smack-dab in
the vortex of the Arab world, with the planet’s second largest oil reserves.
Afghanistan is a gigantic mount range, a frontier wilderness where you might
not see a village or villager for hundreds of miles. Of course the former will
cost more than the latter to rebuild.
9) Sen. Biden
talked about Sarah Palin’s record challenging oil companies in Alaska:
And, look, I
agree with the governor. She imposed a windfall profits tax up there in
Alaska. That’s what Barack Obama and I want to do.
No. Had the
debate moderator – who is writing a flattering book about a hypothetical Obama
presidency due out on Inauguration Day, coincidentally – given Palin time to
respond, she could have corrected the record. Palin reformed her state’s
revenue system, setting up Alaska for profits during both good and bad times in
the oil industry. What Gov. Palin did was permanent and logical. It made sense.
It was not a nonsensical windfall profit tax scheme. She knew that would
simply lead the oil companies into hiking up their prices to make up for lost
profit. Sen. Obama and Sen. Biden do not understand that.
10) Sen. Biden
said our top military commander in Afghanistan opposes John McCain’s policies
for Afghanistan:
The fact is that
our commanding general in Afghanistan said today that a surge – the surge
principles used in Iraq will not – well, let me say this again now – our
commanding general in Afghanistan said the surge principle in Iraq will not
work in Afghanistan… our commanding general in Afghanistan. He said we need
more troops.
Total semantics.
Gen. David McKiernan said he wouldn’t call his strategy a “surge,” but
what he wants is more or less the same thing: more troops, as Biden noted, and
to work with friendly indigenous tribal forces in a new counterinsurgency
doctrine. He didn’t say it wouldn’t work. He said it’d be difficult and
different from Iraq. No kidding.
What kind of
point was Biden making anyway? Was he saying whatever Gen. McKiernan says goes? That
Gen. McKiernan’s view of Afghanistan is infallible? Sen. Biden forgot to
mention that Iraq’s former commanders, Gen. Casey and Gen. Abizaid, also
opposed a surge in Iraq when McCain was calling for one. Casey and Abizaid
resigned in stalemate, and the outsider Gen. David Petraeus, who McCain
championed for years, implemented the strategy that McCain had been talking
about for nearly a half-decade.
Biden also failed
to mention that the wildly successful Petraeus – who Biden called “dead flat
wrong” about Iraq last year – was recently promoted to Central Command, and now
oversees Gen. McKiernan as well as the Afghan war theater. What Petraeus says
goes. Not McKiernan. And Petraeus wants to implement in Afghanistan his
same strategy that he succeeded with in Iraq.
11) When Biden
tried to name an accomplishment of Sen. Obama’s, he said this:
Barack Obama, the
first thing he did when he came to the United States Senate, new senator,
reached across the aisle to my colleague, Dick Lugar, a Republican, and said,
“We’ve got to do something about keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of
terrorists.” They put together a piece of legislation that, in fact, was
serious and real.
Talk about
embellishing your own CV. Whenever a surrogate of Sen. Obama’s is asked to name
a single thing their candidate has done, they usually stutter and mumble for a
bit before concluding that he’s done next to nothing. The smart surrogates,
however, the ones who know their talking points down pat, point to this hailed
wizardry of brilliant national security legalization that Obama supposedly took
up himself, going to abandoned Russian warehouses, personally splitting the
atoms and dismantling the warheads themselves, and raising the issue of
anti-proliferation in a heroic bipartisan fashion worthy of some sort of medal.
Give me a break.
The truth of the matter is, this bill was never called the “Lugar-Obama Bill,”
despite what Sen. Obama’s website boasts. It was called “The Nuclear
Non-Proliferation and Conventional Weapons Threat Reduction Act.” Sen. Obama
didn’t spearhead the bill, despite what he claims. He was a mere co-sponsor,
along with 25 other members of the Senate.
See, that’s what
these young go-getting chaps do. They jump on the train right before it leaves
the station, so they can beef up their own record and say “Me too” when asked
about it later.
And despite what
Sen. Biden says today, it didn’t stop proliferation at all. The bill died in
2006 after being reported out of committee. A less ambitious bill that dealt
primarily with conventional and not nuclear concerns was passed the year after.
Sen. Obama has a
long record of this kind of sad, sad, sad padding of his resume. As a
state legislator in Illinois – and always mindful of his next ambitious political
move – he voted “present” 130 times on controversial bills, and arranged with
the President of Illinois’ State Legislature Emil Jones to attach his name to
bills with which he had no part in introducing or passing. It’s a matter of
open record – and it’s sad, in case I haven’t mentioned that part.
12) On clean-coal
use, Biden said:
We believe –
Barack Obama believes by investing in clean-coal and safe nuclear, we can not
only create jobs in wind and solar here in the United States, we can export it.
Leaving aside the
obvious question – “How exactly will investing in coal and nuclear help with
wind and solar?” – Biden was way off, again. Just a few weeks ago, a supporter
of his in Ohio asked Sen. Biden why he and Sen. Obama were supporting clean-coal
technology. Biden responded, “We’re not supporting clean-coal. Guess what?
China’s building two every week, two dirty coal plants. And it’s polluting the
United States. It’s causing people to die.” Biden then pointed at the girl and
said clean-coal was “gonna ruin your lungs, and there’s nothing we can do about
it. No coal plants here in America! If they’re gonna build them over
there (China), make them clean, because they’re killing you.”
13) On the
bailout, Biden said the legislation matched the four principles that Sen. Obama
laid out on his own. But it just… doesn’t.
14) When asked if
Iran or Pakistan were a greater threat, Sen. Biden implied Pakistan and said:
I always am
focused, as you know Gwen, I have been focusing on for a long time, along with
Barack on Pakistan. Pakistan already has nuclear weapons. Pakistan already has
deployed nuclear weapons. Pakistan’s weapons can already hit Israel and the
Mediterranean.
The distance
between Israel and Pakistan is 2,085 miles. Pakistan’s top-range nuclear
missile maxes out at 1,000 miles. Sen. Biden also omitted that the head of the
Pakistani government is friendly, at least abstractly. The only chance that
Pakistan’s central government becomes proactively hostile to the U.S. or Israel
is if Salafist clerics overtake the apparatus of the Pakistani government – the
kind of action that would likely occur should Sen. Obama militarily intervene
into Pakistani territory, as he says he would.
15) When speaking
about the nuclear test-ban treaty, Sen. Biden said:
Number two, with
regard to arms control and weapons, nuclear weapons require a nuclear arms
control regime. John McCain voted against a Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban
Treaty that every Republican has supported.
Wrong. Another 50
members of the Senate opposed the ban as well, and the treaty was
defeated. Nearly “every Republican” opposed the treaty, too, and
for good reasons (too nuanced and geopolitical to delve into now). Sen. Biden
made it seem like McCain was out of the mainstream and was the sole reckless
voice in the Senate for the continuation of nuclear proliferation.
16) Sen. Biden
said John McCain opposed the “Violence Against Women Act,” which Biden had an
intricate role in crafting. This is true, but not because McCain is
pro-beating-up-your-wife. He opposed it for the same reasons the United
States Supreme Court opposed it: because it was unconstitutional and
represented an illegal federal power grab from states.
17) After Gov.
Palin was asked to define the constitutional authority of the vice president’s
office, Sen. Biden had his turn and said:
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 1 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.
No, Sen. Biden.
Everyone should understand that Article 1 of the Constitution does not define the role of the vice presidential office, and only mentions the VP in
context of the office’s legislative responsibility to reside over the
Senate. It says nothing about the Executive Branch. Nothing. He should
understand that.
18) The issue of
funding U.S. troops in Iraq came up. Biden said this:
John McCain voted
to cut off funding for the troops. Let me say that again. John McCain voted
against an amendment containing $1 billion, $600 million… he voted against it.
He voted against funding because he said the amendment had a timeline in it to
end this war. He didn’t like that.
Does he have no
shame? Fact: Sen. McCain opposed an amendment that put a timeline on our
withdrawal from Iraq. He supported the funding package that came without a
timeline. And he did this not because he “didn’t like” the idea of ending the
war, but because he wanted to end the war by winning it; by finally
pacifying Iraq through the new counterinsurgency strategy.
Sen. Obama said
he’d never vote against funding U.S. forces, and then did precisely that when
the timelines for withdrawal that he wanted in the bill were kept out of
it.
At the time Obama
did this, Biden opposed him and said he was being reckless with American
lives. All Gov. Palin had to say was something like this: “Sen. Biden, you
and I share an overriding commonality. We are both parents of sons serving
overseas in Iraq. We share that experience, and we both know that feeling that
only fathers and mothers of veterans get when we hear about another IED attack,
or another casualty report. When your presidential candidate, Sen. Obama, voted
to cut off funds for the U.S. military, you opposed the measure and rightly
said ‘This is cutting off support that will save the lives of thousands of
American troops.’ Now I ask you, Joe, with all sincerity, can you look me
in the eye – can you stare into the camera and look the country in the eye –
and tell me you are comfortable with Barack Obama as the Commander-in-Chief of
your son? Because I’m not.”
Had she said
that, it would have been game, set, match.
19) Biden began
talking about Lebanon and said this:
When we kicked –
along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said,
“Move NATO forces in there. Fill in the vacuum, because if you don’t know – if
you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”
This had to be,
by far, my favorite excerpt from the night. What in God’s good Milky Way
galaxy was Sen. Biden talking about? Hezbollah kicked out of Lebanon? France?
NATO? What?
Anyone who
happened to watch the Israeli-Hezbollah war two summers ago could testify: none
of this happened. It just simply didn’t happen. I’m not quite sure how to say
it other than that: it didn’t happen. It’s like Biden is living in an
alternate universe. Hezbollah wasn’t kicked out of anywhere. France didn’t
do anything. NATO didn’t kick anyone anywhere, either. Neither did the United
States or Israel. Neither did the Lebanese.
You could imagine
the scene at the Guariglia household. There I was, sitting down and listening
to the man who might become vice president talk about imaginary military
interventions and make-believe military deployments. It was borderline Fantasia.
He might as well have said Carrot Top captured Osama bin Laden – or Lucille
Ball kicked al Qaeda out of Six Flags theme park. And we’re supposed to be
unnerved that Palin might be a heartbeat away from the presidency?
The entire night,
Biden talked about things that exist only in his mind. And what’s unsettling is
how serious and forthright he is when he states these falsities. It’s almost
pathological. He even got the name of the restaurant he visits in Delaware wrong (it’s
been out of business for many years).
Whenever Sen. Biden
is about to say something he thinks is profound, he gets this exasperated
I-can’t-believe-none-of-you-know-what-I’m-about-to-tell-you look on his face,
and prefaces his statement with “Look, people,” or “I want to make myself
perfectly clear, here,” or “Let me repeat myself so there’s no confusion.” He
then continues on a tangent, rambling on and listing off names and numbers,
dates and times, and places and people. It’s all very quite impressive if you
aren’t privy to the information he’s throwing at you, but after some quick
fact-finding research, it’s moderately simple to come to the conclusion that
everything Sen. Biden just said was either a half-truth or an outright
falsehood.
A cynic would
suggest this kind of behavior is to be expected from a man who once plagiarized
a speech about his family tree, and was forced to resign from the 1988
presidential race. Every single time Biden opened his mouth during the debate,
I made that sound Scooby Doo makes whenever he’s surprised or shocked. What’s
so worrisome about this, however, is how much conviction Sen. Biden has
when he says these things; a stern, serious grimace that would be reassuring if
the words that accompanied it were not wholly detached from reality.
The sad truth is,
Sen. Biden hasn’t changed much from 1988. I don’t want to believe that because
I like Biden on a personal level, and think he’s a good guy overall. But he’s
making it hard for us to come to any conclusion other than he’s the same person
who once lied about his family background, using word-for-word the biography of
a British politician’s family, in order to make himself a more attractive
presidential nominee 20 years ago. (Jack Shafer of Slate said it
best, when he rhetorically asked: “What kind of plagiarist is Joe Biden? The
unusually creepy kind.”)
Anyone familiar
with Sen. Biden’s knack for fibbing and embellishing must take everything he
says with a grain of salt. On nearly every issue, Sen. Biden seems to take
credit for having been the first person to raise that specific issue “years
ago.” Global warming? “I was the first to raise that issue years ago.” Arms
control? “I warned of that years ago!” Disease epidemics? “Me, me, me –
years ago!” It’s very unbecoming, and very untrue.
I think it’s safe
to say we all know at least one unpleasant person like this in our lives. (On a
side note, someone put Joe Biden in touch with the New York Giants’ front
office, because they could use a good draft pick in 2015.)
Too bad Gov.
Palin isn’t a policy wonk. Another candidate might have been able to call Biden
out on these tall tales during the debate. By any objective standard, the sheer
quantity, quality, and magnitude in Sen. Biden’s misstatements were
unprecedented. To put it bluntly, there’s just never been anything like it –
and there likely may never be anything like it again.
That Biden’s
history-making performance has been met with near-silence from the press is the
latest proof that the mainstream media is fully in the tank for Obama’s
candidacy. Rest assured, had Gov. Palin said the things Sen. Biden said – about
wars that never happened, bills that never passed, nuclear test-ban treaties
that never materialized, etc. – the all-out media blitz on her performance
would have forced McCain to drop her from his ticket. Either way, the election
would have been over.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Nicholas Guariglia is a polemic and essayist who writes on Islam and Middle Eastern geopolitics. He is a student at the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, where he is studying U.S. foreign policy. He also contributes to http://www.globalpolitician.com and http://www.worldthreats.com He can be reached at
Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.
2 Comments | Post a Comment
It really doesn’t matter! One being a Delusionist and the other being an Illusionist.
Either way, America Loses.
October 8 at 5:40 pm | #1 | Link
I applaud Nicholas Guariglia for taking the time to write such an in-depth article regarding Joe Biden. You are one of the most well written idiots I’ve come across. I only use the term idiot because it is defined as “A person of profound mental retardation having a mental age below three years and generally being unable to learn connected speech or guard against common dangers.”
I see you in this light and yet you are able to write such a long, detailed article. Quite profound that this is possible for you. Try reaching down between your legs, find your ears and pull with all of your might to get your head out of your ass.