My esteemed Keloland Colleague, and NSU colleague emeritus, David Newquist, has this to say about Sarah Palin in yesterday's debate:
[W]hile the TV commentators lauded her for her folksy speech, many people who have some education and respect true knowledge and reason find smarmy references to Joe Sixpack and soccer moms an insult to the intelligence.
Well, one wonders what people who "respect true knowledge" think of Joe Biden's imaginative comments. Here is Michael J. Totten writing for Commentary:
In Thursday night's vice presidential debate between Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin, Biden said the strangest and most ill-informed thing I have ever heard about Lebanon in my life. "When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know — if you don't, Hezbollah will control it." Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel." [Emphasis added.]
What on Earth is he talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in an alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one.
Nobody – nobody – has ever kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Not the United States. Not France. Not Israel. And not the Lebanese. Nobody.
Joe Biden has literally no idea what he's talking about.
A lot of pundits have savaged Governor Palin for her ignorance about foreign policy. It was certainly fair for them to do so. She may be one heartbeat away from the big desk. But what are we to make of Joe Biden, who, when he is ignorant of the facts, just makes them up out of whole cloth? Is that "true knowledge"?
And then there was Biden's equally imaginative reading of the Constitution:
Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.
And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.
The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he's part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.
Those are Biden's words from the debate transcript, courtesy of Powerline. Where does one begin? Article I of the Constitution defines the legislative branch. And there, the Constitution clearly puts the Vice President as the President of the Senate. In practice, the VP has rarely presided over the Senate. Biden could have pointed that out and been on firm ground. What is clear is that he has not more idea what the Constitution says than he has about Lebanon or the rest of planet earth. And when he doesn't know, he just makes it up as he goes.
So who do we want as VP? Someone who is getting up to speed, as Obama has been doing for the last 15 months, or someone who doesn't need to get up to speed because he can simply invent the truth as he goes? Some people can't tell the truth. Biden can't tell the difference.
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