Here in the Philly area, our PBS station is based in Wilmington, Delaware. Our media market overlaps with Delaware’s so we were very familiar with Joe Biden long before he became a nominee for vice-president. You’d see him at a Sixers game, or elsewhere around town. And he was often on the nightly news. It’s probably true that liberals from other parts of the country mainly knew Joe from his work on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. If not that, then they remembered him for his work on killing Robert Bork’s nomination or his failure to kill Clarence Thomas’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. I don’t know if it’s true, now that they’ve gotten to know him better, that liberals really love Joe Biden as much as Karen Connolly wants us to believe. Biden, after all, cast a bad vote on Bush’s biggest foreign policy blunder (the Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq) and his cruelest domestic achievement (the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005). He also had a really inexcusable, hare-brained idea to split Iraq into three pieces that he started pushing during the height of the insurgency there. Joe Biden isn’t right about a lot of things. But there is something about him that Philly liberals will readily acknowledge. It’s kind of captured here:
“He looks just so delighted all the time,” [Annie] Lowrey says. “I’d argue that no one—from John Adams to Dick Cheney—has ever seemed so utterly delighted to be vice president. Such enthusiasm is hard not to like.”
Joe Biden loved being a senator every bit as much as he enjoys being vice-president, and he brought the same enthusiasm to the job. And, because of this, he’s a very hard person to dislike. He’s also unique. Most senators you can fit into some kind of box. You have progressives, blue doggish agricultural/energy types, New Dems, armed services guys, etc. Biden never joined any club or faction. He could be as liberal as fellow Catholics Teddy Kennedy and Pat Leahy, or he could vote with the credit card companies that dominate in his home-state. He could be ridiculously draconian on the War on Drugs and the point man for protecting a woman’s right to choose from Robert Bork. There was always an element of unpredictability about Biden, both in his votes and in what was going to come next out of his mouth. There’s something endearing about that, even if I can’t quite put my finger on it.
As Connolly points out, Biden’s shop has become a liberal oasis in an otherwise pragmatic White House. But I don’t think Biden has changed. He may be with us today on one issue and against us tomorrow on another. The main thing is that he’s loyal, he smart, and his heart’s in the right place. I liked him for vice-president over the other finalists (Tim Kaine and Evan Bayh) and not just for the entertainment value. He’s an asset as vice-president, but I’d be considerably less enthusiastic about him taking over the top job. The same things I find endearing about him as a number two would probably, for the most part, be liabilities for him as a number one.
I hope this kiss wasn’t as sloppy as the one Newsweek laid on him.
Biden is a team player in the White House. He is 100% behind Obama.
I like him because he is just himself. He doesn’t try to fool anyone.
I liked him for vice-president over the other finalists (Tim Kaine and Evan Bayh) and not just for the entertainment value.
I didn’t like him at first. But, he’s head and shoulders above Bayh, who just can’t be trusted, and would have been undercutting Obama at every turn.
Kaine, I think, would have been as loyal as Biden,but not as entertaining.
Ride-or-Die Joe has definitely grown on me.
Biden was my first pick for vice-president the second Obama won the nomination. I didn’t think it was as close as reports have made it (in Obama’s decision making process), and I still don’t. I think Obama more or less knew who his choice was from the get-go.
Also, Biden drafted the Violence Against Women Act, which has also been a major step in the right direction.
Yup, and i’m a big fan of him for that. Also, he gets too much blame for the Bankrutpcy Bill of 2005: yes, he voted for it, but the REAL devil there was Tom carper, who co-sponsored the fucking thing.
I will never forgive Biden for his war on drugs nonsens, so many ruined lives.
Finally, WHYY may have a presence in Delaware, and have operations there, but they are based in Philadelphia:
Although WHYY acquired Delaware’s channel 12 in the early 1960s, HQ was in Philadelphia.
Just a clarification.
He’s a big f’ing deal, man!
I’ve known Biden since we were both teenagers. He is the real deal.
I always liked it when you called him Joey:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/11/10/223226/56
Picking Biden has turned out, despite the occasional gaffe, to be one of the best things the Obama admin has done in this so-far mixed-bag, somewhat disappointing presidency.
A substantive and loyal VP, with his own quirks for sure, who basically shares Obama’s political pov. Another way of putting it is he’s pretty good insurance for Obama and Dems should some nut(s) out there decide to act on some of the recent incendiary RW rhetoric. Certainly a more reliable center-left presence in that spot than what Al Gore and even John Kerry would have given us with Lieberman and Edwards.
It’s just a darn shame that in the 1988 race he had that tendency — or had that careless speechwriter — to lift passages from others w/o consistent attribution. But for that, he might have gone on to get the nom and at least put up a fight against Poppy and Atwater in the general. Instead, we got the above-the-fray bland bureaucrat whatshisname …
I know I haven’t said many nice things about Biden before, but outside of the AUMF and being from Delaware(and by extension having to suck it to one of its biggest employers) was he all that bad a Senator? He’s a lot better than say Tim Johnson(who has the bank problem himself).
brings to mind the tarot card The Fool(0). As a card in readings I’ve seen, it conveys a childlike sense of wonder (his delight at being VP) and a blithe faith in where the Fool’s next step will land, whether off a cliff or safely on solid ground.
Biden also has a childlike wisdom in some of the gaffes he turns out…