Notable & Quotable: "Didn't I Eat Lunch There Yesterday?"

"Joe Biden better take another stroll down Union St. in Wilmington, Del. — and fast. At Thursday's debate, Biden said you could get an earful about President Bush's bad policies from customers at Katie's Restaurant on Union. But Katie's closed in the 1980s." — New York Daily News, Oct. 4, 2008

By which we can presume that Biden hasn't strolled down Main Street, in his own hometown of Wilmington, in a quarter century. His propensity to project himself into the past or the past into the present is not an unendearing quality and reminds us of Ronald Reagan's own "Twilight Zone" moments. But can you imagine what the reaction would have been if John McCain had said that Lincoln surveyed the Gettysburg battlefield in a helicopter just before delivering his address or if he quoted a jingle that he had "just seen" on a Burma Shave billboard? The MSM's Dementia Squad would have been merciless. Remember the outcry when McCain confessed that he doesn't know how to use a computer? Well, the Queen of England traditionally doesn't carry money on her person, which doesn't mean that she doesn't know what it's for.

Although he does not look the part today, Biden was the Obama of his time. He ran for the Senate at 29 with his only previous political experience being 2 years on the Wilmington city council. After 35 years in the Senate his career was pretty much stalled and his next landmark achievement would have been to break Strom Thurmond's record if Obama had not decided that Biden was just what he needed -- his own old WASP. Although pundits never tire of pointing out that Palin's chief asset to McCain is her youth and gender, they prefer to allude to Biden's "experience" rather than the fact that he has seen the hill and gone over it several times.

Although Biden likes to say that he will be right next to Obama advising him on every decision (if not actually making the decisions for him), I suspect that if the unthinkable happens Joe Biden will be the most isolated vice-president in U.S. history (which is saying a lot). Obama chose his advisors long ago from a select group of left-wing radicals and fellow travellers who regard Biden as only marginally more acceptable than McCain. They have already undercut Biden by denying him the same strong role as Senate president which Cheney enjoyed in Biden's bailiwick and even had Biden characterize that role as "unconstitutional" in the vice-presidential debate though presiding over the Senate is the only specific role assigned to the vice-president in the Constitution. I just hope for his sake that they don't stick Biden in a White House closet and then forget which closet.

One could almost feel sorry for Biden except that he doesn't appear to feel sorry for himself. Hopefully, the voters will save him from the indignity of being Obama's vice-president.

http://uncadarrell.typepad.com/unca_darrell/2008/10/october-3-conju.html