Tag Archives: Joe Biden

International news, military news, national news, political news

Where was VPOTUS on the bin Laden raid?

bin laden raid

Vice President Joe Biden is known for a lot of things: authenticity, verbosity, good humor, commitment to public policy.

He’s not known as a prevaricator.

Still, if the vice president is going to run for the top job — and I’m not yet convinced he’s going to do so — he’s got to clear up a serious matter.

What was his view on the raid to kill terrorist leader Osama bin Laden? Was he for it or not?

Biden is sending a mixed message regarding the bin Laden raid, which in May 2011 ended with bin Laden being shot to death by a Navy SEAL commando in Pakistan.

It’s been reported that he wanted to wait “for two more things” to occur before sending in the commandos and that he gave that advice to President Obama. Now he says he was for it all along.

I see some language-parsing on the horizon, which doesn’t answer the question about what he endorsed and when he endorsed it.

If he was in favor of the raid at the beginning, but wanted to wait for further confirmation that bin Laden was holed up in that big house in Pakistan, then it’s OK to say so.

Let’s not play games, Mr. Vice President. Give it to us straight.

Then you can let us all know whether you want to run for president.

 

political news

Biggest loser at Dem debate? The guy who wasn’t there

biden

The pundits, analysts and partisan strategists are right: Vice President Joe Biden likely saw the end of his hopes of ever becoming president while he watched the Democratic candidates’ joint appearance on CNN.

Why? Hillary Rodham Clinton has assumed the role of prohibitive front runner for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

Thus, with a strengthened Clinton getting ready to reassert her place, there becomes a shrinking opportunity for the vice president to jump into the primary race to “save the party” from nominating someone with cumbersome political baggage.

My hunch just a day after the debate is that no one will need to persuade the VP that a 2016 presidential campaign is futile. He’ll know it. I suspect that he knows it today.

The vice president has had a long career of public service. He can be proud of what he’s done — as a member of the U.S. Senate and as vice president of the United States for two terms.

Yes, there have been the occasional hiccups, gaffes and blunders along the way. Hey, no one is perfect.

Clinton’s performance has gone a long way toward cementing her front runner status.

I expect former Sen. Jim Webb to drop out soon, along with former Govs. Martin O’Malley and Lincoln Chafee. No one today is taking about their debate performances.

All eyes and ears turned to Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Of the two, Clinton emerged as the stronger candidate.

That means, Mr. Vice President, your hopes are likely dashed.

Forever, I’m saddened to say.

 

national news, political news

VP teeters on brink of huge decision

biden

Vice President Joe Biden is giving me heartburn.

Will he run for president in 2016 … or not?

I’ll stipulate up front that I’m not going to predict what he’ll do. I didn’t think Democrat Hillary Clinton would run for the U.S. Senate in 2000 after she and her husband left the White House; she did. I thought Republican Colin Powell might run for president in 1996; he didn’t.

I’ve waffled on the vice president’s immediate political future so much I’m giving myself motion sickness.

Biden ponders run

Part of me wants him to run. I happen to like the vice president and admire his long record of public service — gaffes and all.

He’s experienced immense personal tragedy, with the deaths in 1972 of his wife and daughter in a car crash that injured his two sons; then came the death of his older son, Beau, of brain cancer just a few months ago.

Biden has shown courage and grace in the face of these tragic events.

Another part of me, though, wants him to avoid being labeled for the rest of his life as a “loser” if he fails to win the Democratic nomination. Clinton is the frontrunner, although she’s been damaged by controversy involving e-mails and Benghazi. Biden has run twice already, in 1988 and again in 2008.

Joe Biden isn’t the perfect alternative to Clinton, but he’ more perfect than, say, socialist U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who’s polling quite well these days head to head against Clinton.

Only the vice president and his family know what he’ll decide. He’s expected to announce his plans within the next 10 days or so.

As tempting as it is in this forum to try to guess out loud what he’ll do, I’ll remain quiet. It’s Joe Biden’s call to make all by himself.

It’s clear that Biden wants to be president. It’s not at all clear whether he believes he’s got what it takes to derail the frontrunner.

I’m trying to imagine the immense pressure that accompanies a decision like the one facing the vice president. I can’t comprehend it.

You do what your heart tells you to do, Mr. Vice President.

 

national news, political news

Palin criticizes Obama visit? Shocking!

Palin

The least surprising criticism of President Obama’s recent visit to Alaska came from, that’s right, the state’s former half-term governor and one-time Republican vice-presidential nominee.

Sarah Palin said Obama spent too much time on “touristy” attractions.

Palin, known as “Denali” back when she ran for VP on the 2008 GOP ticket led by John McCain, chided and jabbed at the president, I guess, for coming to Alaska to announce changing the name of Mount McKinley to its ancient native Alaskan name, Denali, which was the Secret Service code name assigned to her when she ran with McCain against Obama and Joe Biden.

There’s just no pleasing some folks.

OK, Palin and the president disagree on the effects of climate change, which Obama also wanted to highlight on his trip way up north. She wrote an essay in which she invited him to see a glacier that, according to Palin, is actually growing.

She also encouraged him to visit military personnel stationed in Alaska.

That’s all fine and dandy.

My own wish would be for Sarah Barracuda to stick to matters she knows best. Like reality TV.

I mean, come on. Barack Obama was the first sitting president in U.S. history to venture north of the Arctic Circle. That’s got to be worth at least a little bit of a shout-out.

 

national news, political news

Biden may be channeling RFK

RFK

While continuing to ponder the idea that Vice President Joe Biden might jump into the 2016 presidential race, my mind keeps turning to another prominent Democrat from a distant era.

About two generations ago, U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy straddled the fence on whether he should seek the 1968 Democratic Party presidential nomination, just as the vice president is considering it today.

In 1968, an incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, was going to seek re-election to a second full term. He already had a challenge from Sen. Eugene McCarthy.

RFK remained on the sidelines.

Today’s front runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, also is facing a serious challenge, from Sen. Bernie Sanders. She also is facing a possible problem of her own making, those e-mails she sent out while serving as secretary of state.

LBJ had his own headache. It was the Vietnam War.

President Johnson then ran in the New Hampshire primary and finished first — but barely. McCarthy nearly beat him.

It was then that Sen. Kennedy joined the race. LBJ dropped out. Kennedy mounted a furious and frantic campaign against McCarthy and then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

He won the California primary on June 5, 1968, declared “on to Chicago and let’s win there.” Then he walked into the hotel kitchen, where the assassin was waiting.

It was over in burst of gunfire.

There’s a curious parallel between then and now.

I keep wondering if Biden is waiting for Clinton to make a politically critical misstep. What if something emerges from this e-mail probe that inflicts a mortal wound on the party’s front runner?

Would he then seek the party nomination to “rescue” it from someone who cannot win the election, just as RFK sought to rescue the party from McCarthy’s insurgency and HHH’s damage caused by his support for the Vietnam War?

The vice president seems be leaning toward running. If Hillary Clinton makes a mistake that dooms her candidacy, it had better occur quickly.

The difference between 1968 and 2016 shows itself in the preparation that’s now required to get one of these campaigns off the ground.

John Edwards, political news

OK, Mr. Veep, which is it? In or out?

biden

Vice President Joe Biden is driving me nuts.

Just when I think he’s going to jump into the 2016 Democratic presidential primary race, he makes me think he’s going to think twice and not go.

Then the guy hires a communications chief who once worked for former Sen. John Edwards’s — yes, that John Edwards — ill-fated 2008 presidential campaign.

Kate Bedingfield is her name. I won’t hold her former job as flack for one of recent political history’s more notorious marital infidels against her.

“She will be a key adviser to me, a terrific asset to our office, and an important member of the entire White House organization,” Biden said in a statement. Of course he had to couch it in terms of her working for the vice president’s office and becoming such a key member of the “White House organization.”

She reportedly is a first-rate PR expert. That ratchets up the chatter about the vice president’s political ambitions.

Is he in or out?

Biden met this past weekend with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who’s the darling of the far left of her party. She, too, has been considered a possible presidential candidate, even though she has virtually eliminated any possibility of her running. I did say “virtually,” yes?

What was that meeting all about? Was he seeking her endorsement? Is he looking for further assurance that she’s really, really and truly not a candidate in 2016? Might he be sounding her out about joining him on a prospective Democratic ticket?

Only they know. They ain’t tellin’.

I made need a tranquilizer before this is all over.

Today — as opposed to just the other day — that fake trick knee of mine is telling me the vice president wants to make one more run at the Big Job.

He’s just got that one obstacle standing in front of him: Hillary Rodham Clinton. But now it appears she’s been damaged … maybe, possibly. That e-mail mess is getting harder to clean up.

Is the vice president now poised to rescue the Democratic Party and from its far left fringe, which now seems enamored of Sen. Bernie Sanders?

Time is running out, Mr. Vice President.

We need a decision. Soon.

And my hunch is that is exactly what Kate Bedingfield is telling him.

 

national news, political news

Sen. Cruz goes low once more

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) speaks during the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, on Aug. 10.

 

Ted Cruz needs to get his mouth washed out with soap.

Or taken to the woodshed.

Or maybe sent to bed without his supper.

Hey, how about all three?

The young freshman U.S. senator from Texas — who’s seeking the Republican presidential nomination — did it once again. He uttered an inappropriate criticism at a leading Democrat at precisely the wrong time.

The man has no compassion filter … apparently.

Former President Carter announced this week he suffers from cancer. What did Cruz do? He punched Carter in the gut, using the standard GOP stump speech rhetoric about how bad things were in the late 1970s, when Carter was president.

“What I commented on was the public policy of the Carter administration in the 1970s, and it didn’t work,” Cruz said. “Millions of people hurt and as a result it sparked a grassroots movement to turn this country around. The same thing is happening because we’re seeing the same failed public policy.”

Couldn’t this young man have laid off the 39th president while the rest of us absorbed the terrible news about his very serious illness?

You’ll recall that a few days after Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Beau, died of brain cancer, Cruz poked fun at the vice president. That, too, was an inappropriate and tasteless remark and at the wrong time.

To his credit, Cruz did apologize to the vice president.

I believe another apology, to President Carter, is in order.

 

national news, political news

Should the VP run … or call it a career?

biden

My trick knee is throbbing again.

It’s telling me that Vice President Joe Biden is going to run a third time for president of the United States. It’s also telling me he likely should forgo the 2016 and call it a career.

Truth is, I don’t have an actual trick knee. But if I did it would suggest that the vice president needs to think as deeply about this possible campaign as he has thought about any key political decision he’s ever had to make.

One analysis suggests a Biden candidacy depends on an implosion by Hillary Rodham Clinton. The e-mail controversy keeps nipping at her. Will it forestall her expected nomination? Is the vice president the person to carry a similar message — whatever it is — forward onto the campaign trail?

I happen to like and admire the vice president. I believe he and the president have formed a true friendship; I also believe President Obama’s relationship with Hillary Clinton is, well, not nearly as warm.

But warm-and-fuzzy relationships with an incumbent president aren’t enough.

Clinton is going to remain a formidable opponent for anyone — be they Democrat or Republican. As someone noted last night on MSNBC, which political demographic group does Biden take away from Clinton?

The vice president has run twice already for the White House. His 1988 campaign cratered over reports that he was lifting statements from a British pol and using them in his own stump speeches. His 2008 campaign ran into a buzzsaw operated by a young U.S. senator from Illinois, Barack H. Obama.

That ol’ trick knee is telling me he doesn’t want to lose a third time.

As much as many of us out here would like to see him run, my hunch is that the vice president is going to call it career.

 

national news, political news

What has become of Hillary the Invincible?

hillary

There once was a time — not that long ago — when Hillary Rodham Clinton was considered a shoo-in not just for her party’s presidential nomination, but for the office itself.

She was Hillary the Invincible. The 2016 Democratic presidential nomination was, to borrow that cliché, “hers to lose” — although I’ve never quite understood what phrase actually means.

Then came some nasty stuff.

The Benghazi matter doesn’t count. I do not consider the Benghazi tragedy to be a “scandal,” as some media blowhards on the right have called it.

Here’s what is more troubling in my view: the e-mail matter.

The former secretary of state revealed some months ago that she used her personal e-mail server to communicate with others about, um, State Department business. That disclosure troubled me when I heard and I troubles me even more now. Why? Because of reports that — as some have feared — messages sent out into the public domain contained classified information.

The Justice Department has now ordered Clinton to turn over her personal e-mail server to the spooks at DOJ, who’ll look over all the material that went out on it. But as the Washington Post’s Chis Cillizza notes:  “It’s impossible to see this as anything but a bad thing for her presidential prospects.”

The trustworthiness issue is beginning now to dog the former first lady/U.S. senator/secretary of state. Is she for real? Is she authentic? Can she be trusted to tell us the truth all the time?

Yes, I am having doubts about all of that, right along with a lot of other Americans.

The Democratic field already has three other candidates seeking the party’s presidential nomination. I’m waiting to hear whether a fourth non-Clinton will jump in … that would be Vice President Joe Biden, about whom much has been written during his lengthy career in government.

He’s become the target of late-night comedians’ jokes because of his occasional gaffes. No one, though, doubts his authenticity or his motives for seeking a career in public service.

Whether he runs, though, likely might depend on how much damage gets done to Hillary Clinton’s once-seemingly invincible image.

 

national news, political news

Open White House race = many candidates

alGore_1515233c

Here’s a fact of political life in America.

When there’s no incumbent involved in a campaign, you invite all comers to seek the office that’s being vacated. Everyone, or so it seems, becomes interested in the office at stake.

Such is the case with the White House. A two-term president, Barack Obama, is prohibited from running again. He’s bowing out in January 2017. The Republican field is as full as I’ve seen it in more than four decades watching this stuff; 16 men and one woman are running on the GOP side. It’s becoming quite an entertaining spectacle — to say the very least.

The Democrats? Well, until about two, maybe three weeks ago, it seemed that Hillary Clinton had that nomination in the bag. She still is the heavy favorite.

But she’s not going to anointed as the party nominee next summer, or so it appears. Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has closed a once-huge gap. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is taking aim at Clinton, as is ex-Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee. We haven’t heard much yet from ex- Virginia U.S. Sen. Jim Webb.

But now we hear of a couple of big names — as in really big names — possibly entering the Democratic Party primary field.

One of them is Vice President Joe Biden.

The other? Get ready: It might former Vice President Albert Gore Jr.

Some media outlets are reporting that “insiders” are discussing the possibility of a Gore candidacy. My reaction? Holy crap!

He damn near was elected in 2000, winning more popular votes than George W. Bush, who was elected because he won a bare majority of electoral votes. What many folks have forgotten about that election is this: Had the vice president won his home state of Tennessee in 2000, there would have been no recount controversy in Florida, no “hanging chad” examination, no narrow Supreme Court ruling to determine who won that state’s critical electoral votes. Gore lost his home state to Bush. There you have it.

This election already is shaping as the most entertaining in at least a couple of generations. The thundering herd of Republicans is being overshadowed by a billionaire hotel mogul/entertainer/wheeler-dealer. The Democratic field is being dominated by a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” drawing huge crowds and a former secretary of state with growing problems stemming from her use of a personal email account to conduct State Department business.

Will two men who’ve served a “heartbeat away” from the presidency now join the field?

We know that Vice President Biden is considering it. As for Al Gore? Stay tuned and hang on … maybe.