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  According to the Concord Monitor, Senator Joe Biden is a candidate for president in 2008. "I should be more coy about it, but... I'm not very good at being coy,” he told the Monitor editorial board. Actually he made it official last March, but nobody noticed.
To get things rolling, he’s staked a couple major
positions. He believes the war in Iraq can still be won – which might fly in the general election, but will be very hard sell in the Democratic primary. He also says the Bush tax cuts are the root of our budget problems. I’d say it goes well beyond tax cuts to the general acceptance of avarice as a corporate virtue. But don’t expect the senior senator from America’s corporate tax haven – home to half of the New York and American Stock Exchange listed companies – to promise to root out corporate America’s undue influence in Washington.
He’s DLC member – the recipient of the 2005 Harry S. Truman Award from Al From & Co. Predictably, he’s made no mention of a national health care program, deep-sixing No Child Left Behind, returning to a sane environmental policy, or establishing energy and foreign policies that serve the interests of the American people. But it’s early. He may find that he needs more than national security expertise to distinguish himself from fellow DLCistas Clinton and Bayh.
This isn’t Biden’s first run for the presidency. His last was cut short by his shortcomings. In the fall of 1987, at a small gathering for him in Claremont, New Hampshire, Biden responded to a softball question about his academic background and law school ranking with an offer to compare IQs with the questioner. I guess it could have been worse. Then Biden boasted that he graduated at the top of his class at Syracuse University Law, which turned out to be a hundred or so spots away from the truth. C-SPAN was there taping, capturing the very moment that was the beginning of the end for Biden 88.
The questioner that evening 20 years ago was a guy in his late fifties, little glasses, big belly, and from his tone and the nature of his question, he seemed to be supporter, or at least considering Biden. It was Campaigning 101, and played properly it was an open opportunity for the Senator to toot his own horn – something he generally does without encouragement, and maybe that was the problem. But I watched it on C-SPAN and Biden seemed angry, defensive, and not in control of his mouth. He looked like a bad guy, so the press treated him as one.
Biden was 45 years old at the time, already a fifteen year veteran of the US Senate. So this was more than an amateurish blunder – it was as if somebody fed him his self-destruct codes that day. He blames it on his immaturity and arrogance. Call me a scold, but claiming immaturity at age 45 sounds too much like Henry Hyde’s “youthful indiscretions” dodge. If he hadn’t grown up by then, well…and as for his arrogance – is it possible that another 20 years in the senate has humbled him? We’ll see.
It was also alleged that he plagiarized a speech from British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, but it turned out that Biden had credited the borrowed lines to Kinnock at other events, but failed to make the citation one night in Iowa – a video of which was provided to the media by John Sasso, Michael Dukakis’ campaign manager. Biden dropped out; Sasso was fired. The difference being that only Mike Dukakis missed John Sasso, but a lot of people missed Joe Biden.
Tragically, just before the New Hampshire primary, Biden suffered a brain aneurysm. His doctors gave him a 30 percent chance to pull through – and he did. With another chance at life and some newly acquired hair plugs, he went back to work in the US Senate, where he’s been ever since.
Now he’s back in New Hampshire and Iowa, and if he can keep his trademark bloviating to a minimum, who knows? He might make it all the way to the primary this time. 
~Jack McEnany
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