Joe Biden: ‘Nuance’

I ignored the advice of Allahpundit, whose blog entry advocated skipping ahead in this video. I have to finish reading A User’s Guide to the Brain and needed some serious humor to get me going. So I watched even the advert (that someone else complained about); following that Katie Couric’s voice over reminded me of Dan Rather’s ominous intonation at a Famous Person’s funeral: “In the distance, a dog barks.” (Or was it “A dog barks in the distance”?)

Now that I’ve watched, I have a couple of questions:

Did Katie Couric accuse Joe Biden of being “über careful”? Well, he denied it straight away, so I suppose no harm done.

How do you take “Barack Obama ain’t taking my shotguns” out of context?

Why is Biden still trying to promote his mythical blue collar roots? Or was it just directed at the echo chamber he panders to?

Doesn’t know much about Sarah Palin? Doesn’t he know how to use Google? Does this mean he doesn’t know she bagged a Bigfoot?

Hang on…Biden didn’t think there was anything intentional about making fun of McCain for not being able to use a computer? Didn’t know about sex ed for kindergartners? Or was he trying to decide if he should say kindergartners could easily fit into those content standards?

This might have been the time for him to pick up an ice cream to distract the viewer, but they were on a train…and all I saw were a lot of teeth.

Update: Someone got in trouble when he arrived back at HQ

Not only does he shamelessly refuse to apologise for the mockery his campaign lobbed against a former POW who can’t use a computer because he had been tortured, but also he projects his rationale onto McCain in a most infantile manner: “My ad sucks because he’s mean to me!”

I wonder if this will be the Obama/Biden MO when dealing with people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? “No, no, no we thought some more about what you said, you know we were only reacting to what other people said you said. Back at the Oval office we reviewed the transcripts for ourselves and you know, I really didn’t know haboob could do that to helicopter engines, so no, no, we assure you we will not be asking for any sort of apology, or explanations, or, no, in fact it is disgraceful the way they treat guests in New York, we will be looking forward from now on, and in fact we are very sorry for what we have done to the Iranian people. Um, what was the question?”

Yeah. That’s nuance.

Update: Yap it was all over the place alright: Biden’s expert grasp on history and confident statement that, “Part of what a leader does is to instill confidence and demonstrate that he or she knows what they’re talking about[.]”

To wit:

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed,” Biden told Couric. “He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”

How ignorant is this statement? Let me count the ways:

1. Franklin Roosevelt didn’t become president in 1929 during the crash. He won the 1932 election and took office in 1933, largely because of the 1929 crash and the incompetent protectionist policies that transformed it into a Great Depression.
2. If FDR and President Herbert Hoover didn’t talk about the “princes of greed” in 1929, by the time FDR took over, that kind of populist rhetoric had certainly taken root. FDR greatly escalated the scope of federal government to institute the kind of redistributionism that Obama and Biden now champion.
3. If Hoover or FDR appeared on television in 1929 or even 1933, only a few hundred people would have seen it. Television was still an experimental medium and wouldn’t be introduced to the public for at least another decade.

I reckon offices all over the United States are taking bets on when the next gaffe will come. And in a place like Alaska, where right after earthquakes people shout things like “Two!” or “Talkeetna!” to wager the Richter and epicenter, Americans will be assessing level of damage and what state he’ll be in when he says it.

Is it over now?