There’s an old story in Washington of a long-winded senator making a speech that was as bumbling as it was verbose. At length, an exasperated colleague ventured to interrupt: “If the distinguished senator will permit me,” he snapped, “I will attempt to extricate him from his thoughts.”
I was reminded of that story by Sen. Joe Biden’s announcement on Wednesday that he would seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2008.
Biden’s last presidential run, in 1988, ended in a fiasco when it was revealed that he had plagiarized a speech from British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. Biden’s current campaign promises to be different: It’s opening with a fiasco.
Biden’s announcement that he would run for president coincided with the publication of an interview he gave to the New York Observer in which he characterized rival candidate Sen. Barack Obama “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”
I’m a man who spent three years writing speeches for Gen. Colin Powell, so I found this characterization rather startling. So did Sen. Obama, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and every other African-American who ever ran for president.
Indeed, when Sen. Biden called Sharpton to apologize for his remark, Reverend Al cut him short: “I told him I take a bath every day,” he huffed.
Sen. Obama, a shrewder politician, was more subtle in his response. He said that Sen. Biden was just “being Joe.”
Biden insisted that his remark had been taken out of context, but it’s clear that he’s started his campaign for president with a major political pratfall.
He should have known better. Even before the ill-fated interview, Biden was well aware that he had an Achilles mouth.
As the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden has already made himself obnoxious by his rambling monologues and repeated interruptions of other senators. A week ago, for example, he opened a hearing on Iraq with a 3,000-word statement in which he used the word “I” 88 times.
Biden modestly acknowledges that his wordiness is keeping him from being, in his phrase, “the best Biden I can be.” But, as the Observer interview suggests, he has made little effort to better himself by buttoning his lip.
Until he does, we can only speculate as to what his idea of a “best Biden” may be. I have an uneasy suspicion that he might resemble a certain British MP who boasted to Winston Churchill that he was a self-made man.
“I am glad to hear that,” Churchill shot back. “It relieves Almighty God of a fearful responsibility.”
