John Nance Garner, FDR’s first vice-president, famously said the job of second-in-command wasn’t “worth a warm bucket of spit.” Well, that’s not exactly what Garner said, but in an era before “hot microphones,” newspapermen were kind enough to bowdlerize it for him.
Garner’s blunt aphorism that came to mind when Vice President Joe Biden appeared at the signing ceremony for the Democrats, ahem, “historic” health care legislation. In case you didn’t grasp the magnitude of what was happening, Biden elevated the decorum of the event by informing the members of the press that this was a “big [expletive] deal.”
But if “Cactus” Jack Garner had a foul mouth, the former Speaker of the House more than made up for it by being a respected legislator.
In Biden’s case, perhaps it’s not the office of the vice-president that isn’t “worth a warm bucket of spit,” but rather the officeholder. Even the most ardent Democratic defenders can’t and won’t defend the idea that Biden is an asset to President Obama.
In the midst of the swine flu scare last year, Biden did the epidemiological equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded movie theater, urging all Americans to avoid public transportation. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs had to apologize on his behalf. “Obviously, if anybody was unduly alarmed [by Biden’s comments] . . . we would apologize for that,” he said.
One of Biden’s few high-profile jobs as vice-president was being designated to oversee the stimulus in March of last year. “Around the White House we call him ‘The Sheriff’ because if you’re misusing taxpayer money, you’ll have to answer to him,” said the president.
Sheriff Biden promptly laid down the law. “We know some of this [stimulus] money is going to be wasted,” he said the following June. “Some people are being scammed already.” A fiscal Wyatt Earp Biden is not.
The logorrhea has been such an ongoing problem that the Associated Press’ White House reporter has been known to relay Biden comments with the addendum, “That’s literally the quote.”
And last month Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne had a conversation with Biden and was moved to write at the end of his column: “Obama’s handlers can be terribly tough on Biden for digressing from the narrow point they want him to make. So let the record show that he spent most of our interview ably defending how the stimulus money has been spent and what it has accomplished.”
“Terribly tough”? Can’t the vice-president and six-term senator be expected to speak his own mind without having to be coddled by the most friendly of journalists, lest he be chastised by the White House for going off message? Wait, don’t answer that. The fact Dionne felt the need to include this passage says volumes.
Amazingly, we still hear far more media shrieking about the 2008 GOP vice-presidential candidate – who’s no longer even in public office — being unqualified and uninspiring. Meanwhile, Biden’s a heartbeat away from the presidency and torpedoing public confidence every time he gets near a microphone.
And it’s not like there weren’t warning signs that Biden would become the flaming dirigible of vice-presidents. I haven’t touched on his embarrassingly slight legislative record despite 36 years in the Senate, or his disturbing history of plagiarism. (I will say by all accounts Biden has been a good father in exceptionally difficult family circumstances.)
The most damaging aspect of Biden’s behavior as vice-president is that it was utterly predictable. Which only leads to one inescapable conclusion: Obama’s judgment isn’t worth a warm bucket of spit.
Mark Hemingway is an editorial staff writer for The Washington Examiner
