{"id":19157,"date":"2017-01-13T01:49:39","date_gmt":"2017-01-13T01:49:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=19157"},"modified":"2017-01-13T01:49:39","modified_gmt":"2017-01-13T01:49:39","slug":"biden-deserves-the-high-praise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=19157","title":{"rendered":"Biden deserves the high praise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/t1larg.biden_.obama_.april19.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-19158\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/t1larg.biden_.obama_.april19-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/t1larg.biden_.obama_.april19-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/t1larg.biden_.obama_.april19.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A question came to me after my post about Vice President Joe Biden receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction today from President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n<p>It came from a reader of this blog who asks, simply: &#8220;What were Vice President Biden\u2019s accomplishments?&#8221; The reader recalled when Biden in 1991 chaired the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that decided whether to recommend Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. He called Biden a &#8220;duplicitous blowhard.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>My sense, though, that Biden brought a kind of maturity to Barack Obama&#8217;s inner circle. He brought decades &#8212; three decades&#8217; worth &#8212; of Senate experience; moreover, he brought\u00a0several years, before his election to the Senate in 1972, of public service in Delaware.<\/p>\n<p>Was there a signature achievement? Did the vice president author a policy or a strategy that the president followed? Was Joe Biden singularly responsible for a public policy decision?<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t believe he was successful in an outwardly visible way that the public would recognize.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll accept the president&#8217;s accolades as a testament to the guidance and wise &#8212; and <em>private<\/em> &#8212; counsel that the vice president gave him during the tough times.<\/p>\n<p>The gentleman who asked the question likely knows all of this. He did ask it, though, and I believe it&#8217;s worth sharing a brief response here to others who read these musings.<\/p>\n<p>I suspect a lot of Americans perhaps are wondering the same thing about what Joe Biden <em>accomplished<\/em> during his eight years as vice president. We might not see it with our own eyes, but the man with whom he served in the White House surely did.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s good enough for me.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A question came to me after my post about Vice President Joe Biden receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction today from President Barack Obama. It came from a reader of this blog who asks, simply: &#8220;What were Vice President Biden\u2019s accomplishments?&#8221; The reader recalled when Biden in 1991 chaired the U.S. Senate Judiciary &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=19157\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Biden deserves the high praise<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[540,1017,2505,3688,5103],"class_list":["post-19157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-clarence-thomas","tag-joe-biden","tag-potus","tag-vice-presidency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19159,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19157\/revisions\/19159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}