I was challenged on my position that Joe Biden is the best person we could have in this time of the importance of waging war, ending war, and strengthening our human rights and our economic well-being. There are many opinions, but one suggestion by one reader of my earlier post said, I assume humorously, that George the Less had more gravitas. Only in Dante’s Hades, where all serial killers end up: burning at one end and frozen in ice the other half….Bush Lite, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Putin, Bin Ladin, et al………Now that’s gravity, not dear reader, gravitas.
If one took seriously the opinion that George Bush has more gravitas than Joe Biden……well, I can’t take that seriously. Once or twice or three times, in my life, have I seen one person made for the job at this moment in time. I know a few senators and congressmen and congresswomen. I know of no one in the senate, or the house, or governors with the appropriate brain power, genuine goodness, and EXPERIENCE as Joe Biden has.
Did our reader think I meant Lieberman? I hope not. Joe Biden has the centeredness that, frankly, comes to some degree with age. Plus decades of world-wide and world-class performance. In foreign policy. This is not the time, I believe, to pluck a one-term senator out of the Senate and make him president. Or any governor. Not this time. I know the polls. I also know that it’s a long time to election day. We’ve had all the on-the-job training, these past seven years, to last for all of this long century ahead. The war George the Less started (note…we didn’t have that chance in Vietnam……since it started in 1870).
It goes without saying that in this particular election, I’ll do something I rarely do; and that is, to vote straight Democratic, from top to bottom. The bottom dwellers of this particular Republican Party are right where they should be: the very bottom of the pool.
Biden has so much gravitas that his balls clank.
ed firmage
#1 by Cliff Lyon - December 18th, 2007 at 06:04
Remember the 2004 race? There was almost no media discussion about John Kerry coming out of the early states.
And there is quite a lot of whisper about Joe Biden out here (web) for the very reason Professor Firmage states: No one else comes close in terms of experience and track record.
#2 by Richard Warnick - December 18th, 2007 at 08:22
IMHO (very humble, when daring to disagree with Ed Firmage) Joe Biden has been around Washington too long to be a credible “change” candidate.
Also, I don’t think his partition plan for Iraq is very smart– not because they aren’t already headed in that direction, but because it raises the specter of colonialism when a superpower talks about redrawing boundaries in the Middle East. Iraqis have already rejected Biden’s plan.
#3 by Red Dog - December 18th, 2007 at 10:38
GraVitas, sounds like a thyroid disease.
Well, progressives shilling for Biden proves me and pokemon right! You wouldn’t do such a thing if you thought that there was a there wasn’t a very good likelihood that a republican, even an idiot phony preacher, won’t beat obama or hillary. Just too many negatives in that pea pod.
It looks to me that dems are getting nervous, that the reality, the hubris that any democratic candidate could beat a rep after bush, just isn’t true.
Pays to look early for a replacement, but keep this in mind, daring dems…only twice in American history have sitting U.S. Senators become president — Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy. There have been 15 total Senators that have become President. The reason they have such a hard time is blatant voting record. If you have been in the Senate, you have stroked enough “clankers” as favors for your own special interests, that in any Presidential campaign there is ample ammunition to take you down.
Better to be an unknown like huck. Or like Paul, his voting record is pretty impeccable as a representative, always in line with the constitutional, and he gets the anti-abortion, anti-war,vote while still getting libertarians and a great deal of republicans…,if he were ever covered. Once people find out he is a licensed pediatrician, even disgruntled dems can accept his stance on abortion, and move on to his desire to get this nation back to its Constitutional underpinnings.
So all in all, too bad you played all your big money on crummy hands, now you might not have the “gravitas” to hang with the big boys. Rove has to be somewhere running this show, back in some dark room, with a bubbling cauldron, and a crystal ball, and of course his manservant.
#4 by Cliff - December 18th, 2007 at 11:32
It is unlikely an anti-abortion candidate or an overtly religious one will ever win the presidency, at least in this century.
The religious pandering is over. Bush has given rise to a new public education on the Bill of Rights.
Dems nervous? You must be kidding.
I like Ron Paul too. He’s cute and affable, but he is a freak show.
Ron Paul wants to do away with Social Security. More kidding?
#5 by Red Dog - December 18th, 2007 at 13:46
It’s(SSI) gone anyway Cliff, and the only way it is currently ongoing is by the printing of federal reserve fiat currency. As are so many of our “programs” including military adventurism. Ever wonder why the dollar is at par with the Canadian dollar, and the Euro is sitting at near 1.50 after starting off at 87 cents? Paul would just force what is to come a bit sooner.
Face it, no kidding. The dems have nothing in their current candidates. Even if they win, we are on track to disaster, they are bought and paid for, the last 10 months shows us that. At least to those that aren’t hitched to the progressive wagon.
He(Paul) would never rule against abortion as a strict constitutionalist, the right to an abortion is the Law of the Land, and the President plays no part in its repeal, that is a Supreme Court issue. Paul opposes abortion because he is a pediatrician, and except in cases that threates the life of a Mother, he knows abortion for the ugly thing it is.
If he makes it, watch him get elected, the fed up and the young outnumber progressives and the old bastards that delivered us here. It would be nothing short of a Revolution, and the tory scum would be runnin’ again.
#6 by History Rages on. - December 18th, 2007 at 14:08
“Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.” G. B. Shaw
#7 by Firmage Ed - December 18th, 2007 at 16:38
My man is an underdog, as most of you have noted. Senator Joe Biden will have to do better, much better in the early primaries. But we live in hugely dangerous times. I expect we will go through convolutions not yet seen between now and November, 2008.
Your history is right in that it’s been a long long time that a Senator was elected president. I don’t have a clue as to which person will get the nominations of the major parties. I’ve simply stated my wish, my hope that just once in my lifetime, the best qualified gets the nomination and the presidency. Eisenhower and Franklin Delano Roosevelt excepted. They were supesrstars, to me.
There are particular reasons, or economy and most especially our national security, with several world wars ongoing, that I would consider an “inside the beltway” strangely, the best way to get out of this godawful mess in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now, it seems, Iran.
Bush is a murderer. And I’m just not pleased with turning the Commander in Chief spot over to a one-term senator, or governor. I am, however, elated at the Democratic Party potential nominees. I’ve never seen such a stark contrast in my lifetime, between the candidates of the two parties. Ron Paul is a great guy. And I wish him well in his party. He is the one exception to my contrast between the elephant and the donkey.
ed firmage
#8 by History Rages on. - December 18th, 2007 at 17:07
Well, I neither think the current dems of any character or strength of an FDR or an IKE, or we wouldn’t be at this juncture. Those two hand in hand, in tandem, helped ruin the nazis and japs, and made a more hopeful world.
External enemies aside, the current crop of weaklings has not expelled the crownie in our midst. They are as nothings, leavings of a dead party. IF Andy
Jackson were alive, he would SPIT on you, then beat the crap out ya.
As any New England Patriot would abide, or such as a Virginian as Henry…, pray to GOD, but keep your powder DRY!!