Biden
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Thoughts on the debate – VP Edition
In random order
- Regarding Palin – If you can cram enough into 6 weeks to pull off an acceptable job at a debate, either the interview process is flawed or the job simply isn’t that hard. The fact that McCain and Obama can not show up for work for two year periods would suggest the latter.
- While I don’t think Palin won the debate (it wasn’t set up to have a winner really) she clearly took and held the initiative the entire evening
- Biden looked like the knowledgeable guy he probably is, which is really all the veep should be.
- Should McCain lose this election – which it seems he will – Palin probably will be competing with Huckabee for the face of the Republican party, and winning. It certainly seems to going in a populist direction
- The deep love of Israel was particularly noxious on both parties. Granted, Palin is a tribal candidate, not an ideological one, but there seemed to be more love and affection for Israel from her than there was for America as a whole (small town America is a subset). Biden was just foppish on that matter.
- It’s insulting to only mention Israel when talking about our allies, particularly when the UK and Australia have always stood buy us. Neither mentioned those members of the Anglosphere.
- The constant mentions of energy independence destroyed any ability for me to take either seriously.
- While I’ve seen several mentions of Palin winking at the camera, I haven’t seen any mention of her refering to him as “Senator O’Biden” nor of Biden’s reference to “Bosniaks”.
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The agitator brings the Biden pain
Biden’s record on other criminal justice and civil liberties issues is just as bad. Opponents of the federalization of crime might note that the 1994 crime bill he sponsored created several new federal capital offenses. Biden also wants to expand federal penalties for hate crimes. He supports a federal smoking ban. His position on the federal drinking age is, and I quote, “absolutely do not” lower it to 18. He believes “most violent crime is related to drugs” (if he had said “drug prohibition,” he’d be closer to the truth). Biden also has an almost perfect anti-gun voting record. He said last year he favors “universal national service,” either in the Peace Corps or the military. Sounds like conscription to me. He says he’s opposed to the PATRIOT Act, but he voted for both the original bill and its re-authorization in 2005.
Foreign policy? Biden voted for the war on Iraq. Yes, he’s opposed to it now (and I like the partition plan he pushed in the primaries). But he didn’t vote correctly when it counted most. Biden also voted to send troops into Darfur. He wants to enlarge NATO. He voted in favor of the air strikes in Kosovo. He voted to strengthen the trade embargo against Cuba. His seems to be a meddling, interventionist, Clinton-esque foreign policy. His first instinct seems to be that the U.S. military’s objective include some vague notion of “doing good in the world.” Never mind the disastrous consequences that notion has reaped over the years.
I obviously disagree with Biden on a host of economic and regulatory issues, too (though he does seem to be fairly decent on free trade). But that’s to be expected. My problem with Biden is that he’s not even good on the issues the left is supposed to be good on. He’s an overly ambitious, elitist, tunnel-visioned, Potomac-fevered Beltway dinosaur, with all the trappings. He may well have been the worst possible pick among congressional Democrats when it comes to the drug war and criminal justice.
Meg Whitman seems like a more obvious choice now.