Biden Warns US About Barack

Senator Joe Biden, Democratic Vice Presidential candidate, just can't seem to help himself. The man seems to have the political version of Tourette's Syndrome, uttering embarrassing statements at an alarming rate. There was his awkward (to put it mildly) call at a rally to have Charley stand up, and let the people see him. Only problem was, Charley was in a wheel chair. And last week's cry to a partisan crowd that there was one thing that Barack Obama cared about, and that John McCain didn't, and that was a three letter word. Jobs. Even the partisan crowd had to laugh at that one. And some did. The guy has the worst case of foot-in-mouth disease since Gary Hart(pence) challenged the press to go ahead and catch him, if they thought he was having an affair. And we all know how well that turned out for him.

But Biden's latest extemporaneous pronouncement makes all other pale in comparison:

"It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. . . . Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. . .I guarantee, it's gonna happen."

Now I will admit to sheer pleasure from imagining the look on Obama's face when he heard this, or better yet, saw it. And I can see Michelle spurting caviar like a kid oozing cola through his nose. But from a pure political standpoint, I have to wonder what was going on in Biden's ever rambling brain to cause him to say this? Was he trying to make Obama appear strong, to play up the Democratic ticket's foreign policy expertise, and his abilty to handle a 9/11 style crisis? If so, he failed. Nowhere does he say that Barack is ready. In fact, he says that we probably wouldn't like the response.That's reassuring, isn't it? Imagine a small nuke going off in say, Milwaukee. Would we get the kind of response from an Obama administration that calls for understanding our enemies? I'm willing to bet that's one response the American people wouldn't like.

What Biden has done with this statement is to plant doubt in voter's minds about Barack Obama's abilities. It's a repetition of Hillary's "who do you want answering the phone at 3AM?" Unfortunately for Obama/Biden, you'd have to imagine that in that kind of a scenario, most Americans would prefer John McCain be on the line.

There is another possibility. And that is that Joe knows something. It's hard to believe at times, but he just may. All Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates receive intelligence briefings, and Biden alluded to this when he said that there are "four or five possible scenarios" that could play out in the first six months of an Obama administration. Maybe ol' Joe knows something's coming, and well, with his speaking problem, he couldn't help but warn the American people about the danger of an Obama presidency. In which case he may have just performed his greatest service to his country in all his years in politics.