I don’t like Sarah Palin that much (not nearly as much as some people do anyway), and I don’t like Joe Biden, D-MBNA. Having said that, I don’t see how anyone could think Biden won the debate last night.
There is no doubt that Joe Biden is more articulate than Sarah Palin. However, almost nothing he says makes any actual sense.
Biden doesn’t know basic economics, history and doesn’t give a donkey’s arse about the Constitution. Biden misrepresents himself and what he stands for habitually: this is a guy who was all for invading Iraq if the UN had gone for it (and cheered Bush on with early invasion plans) and now pretends he’s Bush’s worst enemy and implies he was against it all along. This is the Joe Biden who created the completely unconstitutional position of the drug czar, which has spurred the growth of an agency which takes billions from those middle-class people Biden says he loves so much. It’s also put many of them in jail. This is the guy who may want to keep the vice-president’s office in the executive branch, but doesn’t care about expanding federal power over everything in your life under the auspices of “interstate commerce.”
As I always say, if you’re articulate and can speak well, you can get elected to office in this country even if you’re mentally insane, a habitual liar, a serial exaggerator or even a murderer. Voters simply go by what feels good to them at the moment, and a good speaker will fool them every time. Someone with real intellect and substance but no speaking ability won’t get out of the gate. Biden is a plagiarist, but it doesn’t matter because he’s “cool, calm and collected” after 30 years of taxpayer-funded practice, and his staffers can filter the facts on Wikipedia.
I also object to those who have stated that Gwen Ifill was perfectly objective despite her forthcoming Obama book. One of her first questions concerned whether “greedy lenders” or “risky homebuyers” contributed more to the subprime mortgage mess. That is a Hillary Clinton stump line if I’ve ever heard one. The home buyers who were buying houses way out of their leagues were also quite greedy in wanting to live in McMansions they couldn’t afford, and the lenders who were “trying to let people live the American Dream” (as Obama and Biden would put it) were also just being “risky.” That wasn’t the only completely partisan question she asked that night, although she did criticize Joe Biden at one point, a decision I’m sure came into play after she received so much criticism in the run-up to the debate. Another question talked about “debt-strapped mortageholders” and “some people have said that mortgageholders paid the price”– in other words, people who (like the Wall Street billionaires) made bad decisions and are now suffering for it who want other people who didn’t make those bad decisions to give them money.
Palin was excellent in her answer to that question, using a light touch to tell people that they need to learn lessons and not be taken advantage of again and pay attention to their parents’ admonitions to not live beyond their means. She also said that government needed to be more efficient, something Obama is big on but Biden didn’t mention this time around. Tax raises mean that jobs will be cut and the private economy will suffer as the public sector becomes more bloated and inefficient.
Biden’s mantra for the night was “John said, ‘Deregulate, deregulate.’” That alone is quite enough to turn someone away from voting for his ticket, as if deregulation is the problem and as if deregulation is a bad thing. Obama says the same thing, but not to this extent.
Biden did get one hit in when he said that he agreed with Palin’s tax raises on oil companies and McCain wanted to get them tax breaks. I give him props for that, but she got back at him when she said that Biden had offered to run on McCain’s ticket. She made the point that raising taxes on oil companies was good and set Biden up to hit his home run. Palin missed a chance to deliver a knockout when she talked about what she’d done in Wasilla, Alaska to improve it and Biden talked about how Wilmington, Delaware was hurting right now. She could’ve pointed out that she’d improved her hometown but after 30 years in Congress, he hadn’t done much to help his.
I am starting to finally buy into this “liberal media bias” thing. Here are two egregious examples from a quick search of the news.
According to The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Biden provided “oodles of details, numbers and records in his answers” which “might win over intellects,” which ignores the fact that many of his “oodles of numbers and records” were completely wrong. Why would intellects fall for that, and why would intellects be any less into Palin’s arguing that people, for instance, should be smart enough next time not to fall for predatory lenders, rather than flocking for Biden’s argument that these mortgage-holders were too dumb to figure it out for themselves and therefore need to be “saved” by taxpayers?
The Baltimore Sun television critic believes it “is hard to imagine any rational human being not thinking Joe Biden delivered one of the most solid and winning debate performances in recent presidential history… the question is whether facts, reason and logic can win out on TV over attitude and image, which is what Palin’s performance was all about.” Hmm, so Biden is all facts, reason and logic while Palin is all image? I’m beginning to believe that there is a mainstream media liberal bias. Rather than even giving Palin credit for being tolerant of same-sex couples, he says she doesn’t know the Republican position on gays and that evengelicals must have fallen “right out of their seats” when they heard. What the hell?
Ways in which Biden stretched the truth (and ways in which they both did):
McCain did not say he was “surprised” by subprime mortgages last December.
McCain did not say he wants the health care deregulated, only that insurance should be allowed to be bought over state lines.
McCain did not vote the same way Obama did on the tax-raising vote– he didn’t vote at all.
McCain does not only want to give Exxon Mobil a tax cut, but he wants to cut the general business tax rate for all corporations.
Obama has said that he would consider meeting with Iran’s president without precondition; Biden claimed Obama had not said this. It’s not a bad thing, anyway.
We didn’t kick Hezbollah out of Lebanon, and neither did France. Nobody has.
You said “…and a good speaker will fool them every time”. GWB is a terrible speaker but I guess he had that magical twinkle in his eye that got the votes.
All in all though, this post was an interest8ing read. I don’t like either party but the Palin scares the crap out of me.
windyridge
October 5th, 2008
I don’t have the time to go through everything on here, but you might want to double-check your claim that Biden’s staff “filtered” the facts about him on Wikipedia. If you click through on the link to see the comparison, the paragraph that was removed wasn’t about the real 1988 plagiarism scandal, but a nonexistent one from 1996.
The paragraph said, “Another plagerism controversy occured during Biden’s [[1996]] U.S. Senate reelection campaign. A television advertisement that was put out by his campaign listed various laws that he had written, the list included the [[Megan's Law]]. The Megan’s Law was actually authored and sponsored by Congressman [[Dick Zimmer]] of New Jersey (U.S. Public Law 104-145). It is not known whether or not Biden was personally aware of the content of this particular advertisement before it was aired.”
The person who wrote that had about as good an understanding of plagiarism, not to mention sex offender law, as one might expect from his spelling.
1) Taking credit for legislation that one didn’t sponsor isn’t really plagiarism. Almost no legislator actually writes legislation; they have staff for that.
2) Along with Sen. Gramm, Biden did in fact sponsor an amendment to create a national, interstate sex offender registry in the Senate. It became law as the Pam Lychner Sexual Offender Tracking and Identification Act of 1996.
In other words, the paragraph got deleted because it was nonsense. If there was to be a whitewash, why not take out the paragraph about Biden’s actual plagiarism scandal?
PG
October 5th, 2008
Bush is a smooth speaker who just can’t pronounce certain words correctly– but he doesn’t stammer around or search for what he’s going to say next, which was Sarah Palin’s problem in those interviews and a lot of people’s problem in everyday life, the reason one gets branded as a “bad speaker.”
Thanks for the correction, PG, that’s an excellent point on which I was mistaken. I incorrectly assumed that because he had plagiarized a few times before, there was some sort of 1996 plagiarism scandal involving Joe Biden. I stand corrected on that point.
libertariangirl
October 6th, 2008
I appreciated your take on the debate, as it differs from most of what I’ve read in the press and on the web. I like to read a variety of opinions and views and then make up my own mind.
Also, although I do read the so-called “liberal” NY Times, I ignore the paper’s editorials. Instead I read the new coverage (which is far more comprehensive than many other papers) and the op-ed writers and letters to the editor. I like to be open to valid points that may be made by persons I don’t necessarily agree with.
With regard to whether there really is a bias in the media, I think with the internet, thousands of blogs, and other informational web sites, we’ve arrived at a time when the traditional media is less relavent and any bias is less important.
Most importantly, I believe that people are smart enough to form their own opinions and I would like to believe that people can see through the bias (be it liberal or conservative) of any media source. But if some folks don’t want to use their God-given intellegence to think for themselves and form their own opinion, what can we do?
Rachy
October 6th, 2008
I read the New York Times, too, but I’ve found that they are better on in-depth articles unrelated to politics than on their political news coverage. About a year ago, this hit home when they claimed that all of the Republicans in one of the Republican primary debates were for the Iraq War– when Congressman Ron Paul was on the stage taking every chance he could to say the Iraq War was wrong and we should withdraw immediately! The “reporter” hadn’t even watched– or if she/he did, didn’t pay attention– to the debate. I lost faith in them since and I don’t pay attention to their news coverage.
While blogs and the Internet are certainly excellent sources of news, they take effort while sitting on the couch and watching MSNBC or CNN does not. It is no coincidence in my mind that the two candidates the media loved the most– McCain and Obama– are the ones still in the race. Hillary and Giuliani were loved for many years, but then they hit the backlash stage, fortunately.
Our media is certainly better than that found in many countries. Its bias is real in many cases, though.
libertariangirl
October 6th, 2008
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