More thoughts about Joe Biden…

Workout notes 5500 yards of swimming, then 7 miles of racewalking (Glen Oak, Springdale course). The swim wasn’t that good.

500 warm up, 500 worth of drill/swim (zoomers)
3 x 1000 with 30 then 60 second rests: 17:36, 17:42, 17:50 (bad trend)
10 x 50 fist on the 1 (slow), 10 x 50 (alternate paddle, free), 500 strokes.

I just didn’t feel right in the pool; I was just “off”.

But I did have some energy left for my walk and so that isn’t a bad thing.

Politics

Joe Biden: here is what I think personally: I think that he is smart and that he speaks well. When he debates or when he speaks, he attempts to teach you something. Here is some stuff from a primary debate.

Here is another news appearance:

Here is a sober look at him:

Joe Biden brings a host of assets to the Barack Obama campaign – chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; working class Irish Catholic roots; toughness on the stump; and the crucial, if difficult to describe, attribute of likability.

At the same time, the five-term Delaware Senator carries some baggage, including two alleged incidents of plagiarism; an episode of resume inflation; a tendency to shoot from the mouth – only sometimes on target; and the dubious distinction of becoming the first national party nominee with known hair plugs. [...]

In an ad put up on Saturday, McCain shows Biden on July 19, 2007 on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Stephanopoulos: “You were asked is [Obama] he ready. You said ‘I think he can be ready, but right now I don’t believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.’” Biden: “I think that I stand by the statement.”

In addition, the McCain web site quotes Biden on the August 7, 2007 Diane Rehm show, “If the Democrats think we’re going to be able to nominate someone who can win without that person being able [bring to the] table unimpeachable credentials on national security and foreign policy, I think we’re making a tragic mistake.”

It’s doubtful, however, that Biden’s campaign critiques of Obama will be held against him: every time a nominee has chosen a primary opponent to join the ticket (Reagan-Bush, Kerry-Edwards), the opposition has tried to use attacks made in the heat of campaigning, almost always to little effect. [...]

In the initial surge of Biden commentary, there has been very little reference to early problems that derailed his 1988 presidential bid: his failure to attribute a long section of a campaign speech that year to its actual author, Neil Kinnock of Britain’s Labor Party and his failure to disclose in a law school paper that he had used 5 pages of material ” from a published law review article without quotation or attribution” according to a Syracuse law school faculty report, dated Dec. 1, 1965. The New York Times detailed the incident in a story on September 18, 1987.

Biden’s plagiarism difficulties during the 1987-88 campaign were compounded by disclosures that on the stump, he had exaggerated his academic credentials.

On September 21, 1987, he acknowledged that an earlier claim – that he ”ended up in the top half” of his law school class and that he ”graduated with three degrees from college” – were not true. In fact, he was 76th in a class of 85, and he graduated college with one degree in a combined major of political science and history.

One of the most insightful analyses of the pros and cons of Biden was posted by Hillary Clinton’s top strategist and communications director Howard Wolfson. He wrote:

“The fighting in Georgia underscored the need to bring some foreign policy experience to the ticket…..It’s critical that the veep be willing and able to take an axe or at least an ice pick to the presidential candidate of the other party….Senator Obama also needs to improve his performance with lunch bucket and working class Democrats. Biden has spent his career appealing to those voters….The Obama campaign clearly made the decision that they did not need their veep pick to reinforce their change message, and that was a smart move. Obama brings plenty of change and excitement on his own.”

Now the charge of plagiarism in the speech is a bit overblown, and here is why:

Summary: The Los Angeles Times reported that when Sen. Joe Biden ran for president in 1987, he “was accused of plagiarism when he did not credit Neil Kinnock, then leader of the British Labor Party, for much of his stump speech.” The New York Times and the Associated Press made similar reports. But they did not note that Biden reportedly had credited Kinnock, as The Washington Post reported at the time: “John Quinlan, a reporter for the Sioux City Journal, said his notes showed Biden said he was quoting Kinnock when he used the same passage in a speech Aug. 14. Stories in The [New York] Times, The Boston Globe and other newspapers also said Biden had used the rhetoric and credited Kinnock for it.” [...]

In contrast with the August 23 Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and AP articles, an August 23 Chicago Tribune article reported:

Twenty years ago, Biden was, in a sense, the Obama of his time, a young turk of a politician with a gift for soaring, transcendental rhetoric. But his first bid for the presidency imploded in 1988 when he was accused of plagiarizing a speech by British politician Neil Kinnock that described the candidate’s working-class roots. Biden was forced from the race after the campaign of eventual nominee Michael Dukakis circulated a videotape with Biden failing to give credit to Kinnock for a speech he gave in Iowa.

Biden, however, had credited Kinnock with the remarks in his other speeches, leaving many of his supporters at the time — and long after — feeling like Biden was pushed from the stage unfairly.

Here are some takes from other blogs that I regularly read:

Cosmic Variance

[...]The things you need to know about Joe Biden are: (1) He has been a Senator forever (half of his life). (2) He is a smart guy, not a stuffed suit. (3) He has formidable expertise in foreign policy. (4) He is somewhat prone to gaffes. (5) He is feisty, and effective in attack-dog mode. (6) He can be a bit of an asshole.

The best news about the pick is that it shows Obama wants to take the fight to the Republicans, especially on foreign policy. There is nobody McCain is likely to pick for VP whom Biden would not be able to make look silly in a debate. As Ezra Klein points out, all you need to know about why Obama picked Biden is contained in this very short clip [...]

Science Avenger.

One problem the selection of Biden exacerbates is the anti-intellectual problem, since Biden packs both a wallop of an IQ, and a higher-even-than-McCain prickly personality factor. I suspect that Biden’s success with blue collar workers is hoped to counter that.

Humor