Biden

The brouhaha over Biden's unattributed quotations reminds me of a conversation I had many years ago with Thornton Wilder. I mentioned that his play, "The Matchmaker," bore a remarkable resemblance to a play by Johannes Nestroy, an early 19th-Century Austrian playwright, the title of which, loosely translated, would be "The Trickster." Wilder responded, with his usual twinkling charm, "Of course, I stole it. I steal all the time--but only from the best." Certainly, Biden's stealings or borrowings are far superior to those of the present incumbent who takes many of his rhetorical quotations from grade B, Rambo-esque movies.

Vice President Joe Biden signaled that the Obama administration would not stand in the way if Israel chose to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, even as the top U.S. military officer said any attack on Iran would be destabilizing. Biden's remarks suggested a tougher U.S. stance against Iran's nuclear ambitions, but administration officials denied that. Instead, White House officials said, his televised remarks Sunday simply reflected the U.S.

Re "Joe Biden's just a barrel of gaffes," Current, Feb. 4 Jonathan Chait tells us that Delaware Sen. Joe Biden has no chance of becoming our president. He utters too many gaffes to warrant serious consideration. Chait also says he has "tons of respect" for Biden and that he'd do a terrific job as president. So Biden is verbose. On occasion that gets him into a little trouble, but it also suggests an openness more likely to be absent in limited, circumspect expressions. Chait should have at least mentioned the real problem here: the average voter's use of faulty criteria to judge candidates.

Vice President Joe Biden promised Saturday that the Obama administration would appeal a U.S. court's decision to drop charges against a group of Blackwater guards involved in a shooting that left at least 14 Iraqi civilians dead. The September 2007 shootings in a busy Baghdad square enraged Iraqis, and tempers were further inflamed last month when a U.S. federal judge dismissed criminal charges against five of the former guards for the security firm now known as Xe. The judge ruled that the prosecution improperly built the case on incriminating statements the guards were forced to give to the State Department.

MARTINS FERRY, Ohio -- Joe Biden Thursday mocked Mitt Romney for attempting to claim credit for the rebound of the American auto industry, linking the GOP hopeful's past criticism of the Obama administration's rescue plan with his role as the head of venture capital firm Bain Capital. The setting for Biden's latest attack on Romney was a Chevrolet plant in the southeast corner of Ohio, to a crowd of 450 invited supporters standing before three Chevy Cruises. The vice president praised Obama for stepping up to save Big 3 automakers General Motors and Chrysler from "liquidation," to preserve what he called an "iconic industry that helped build the middle class.