Exclusive Interview with Cheney, Part I & II

Top 10 gaffes by Barack Obama and Joe Biden

Perhaps Barack Obama was just trying to make Joe Biden feel better by dropping his clanger on Jay Leno. Whatever the President was thinking, 60 days into their new administration it's time for a post-election Obama-Biden Top 10, in reverse order:

10. Just after he's been sworn in by him, the newly-minted Vice President Joe Biden gets the name of Justice John Paul Stephens, "one of the great justices" of the Supreme Court, wrong by calling him "Justice Stewart":

9. Barack Obama jokes about Nancy Reagan having séances in the White House. He later called her to apologise after the AP noted that although she had consulted astrologers, "she did not hold conversations with the dead":



8. Joe Biden forgets the "website number" for the White House internet site designed to show how TARP money is being spent:


7. Barack Obama mixes up the windows and doors at his new home:


6. Joe Biden jokes about Chief Justice John Roberts fluffing the inauguration oath. The president is visibly annoyed with his veep and Biden later apologises:


5. A Marine One double. First, on his maiden Marine One trip Obama breaches protocol and makes life uncomfortable for an enlisted marine by shaking the the serviceman's hand as he's saluting his commander-in-chief:


Then - Gerald Ford, eat your heart out. Barack Obama bangs his head as he boards his helicopter:


4. Joe Biden tells his wife that he had the choice of being either Secretary of State or vice-president - an offer that was news to Obama aides and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when Jill Biden spilled the beans on Oprah:


3. Gordon Brown presents the new President with: a pen holder carved from the timbers of HMS Gannett, a sister ship of HMS Resolute; the commissioning certificate of HMS Resolute; and a seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill. In return, the Prime minister gets 25 DVDS, which don't work in Britain:


2. Joe Biden tells a former Senate colleague who addresses him as "Mr Vice-President" to "give me a f---ing break":


1. The latest one takes the biscuit. Barack Obama jokes about the disabled on the Jay Leno show. Afterwards, he calls the head of the Special Olympics to apologise:


I've only included gaffes committed since the presidential election on November 4th. In October, I did this blog on the top dozen campaign gaffes, which features several from Obama and Biden.

Barack Obama throws Joe Biden under the bus

Pity poor Joe Biden. His "there's still a 30 percent chance we're going to get it wrong" quote is put straight to President Barack Obama during the White House press conference just now and his boss seemed to want to say: "Vice-President Who?"

As reporters started giggling, Obama came close to conceding that Biden was indeed a joke. "You know, I don't remember exactly what Joe was referring to, not surprisingly."

The President went on to say that "I think what Joe may have been suggesting, although I wouldn't ascribe any numerical percentage to any of this, is that given the magnitude of the challenges that we have, any single thing that we do is going to be part of the solution, not all of the solution."

Of course, Biden wasn't saying anything of the sort - Obama knew that and all the rest of us did too.

Biden's exact quote, read out by Fox's Major Garrett at the presser was: "If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, if we stand up there and we really make the tough decisions, there's still a 30 percent chance we're going to get it wrong."

Clearly, Obama and his aides were unhappy about Biden's loose lips. On Friday, top Obama adviser David Axelrod said on CNN: "I don't know exactly about what that math was."

We're probably going to have to get used to Obama explaining "what Joe may have been suggesting". And Biden must be wondering if he's going to end up as a Dan Quayle figure.

Biden's Traveling Press Corps Finds Little Opportunity To Ask Him Questions

The handful of reporters from Biden’s national press corps who have followed him incessantly for two months have not had the opportunity to ask questions regarding the "crisis" matter - even to allow Biden to clarify his remarks - because he has not taken questions or held a press availability with his press corps since Sept. 7.

...And to belatedly answer Biden’s question, it has been 55 days since he held a press conference. He has held two since being named Obama’s running mate.

Biden has also not taken questions from voters in a town hall style setting since Sept. 10 in Nashua, New Hampshire, when he told a supporter that Hillary Clinton might have been a better pick for vice president.

Since then, Biden has only held “community gatherings” and “rallies” where he makes a speech and chats briefly with supporters on the ropeline under the blare of music, no questions asked. Even there, Biden says very little after a digital recorder caught him making statements on clean coal that did not coincide with Obama’s energy policies.

He told Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show” that it was the reason he stays mum when greeting voters, hoping to avoid making comments that might be publicized and used against Obama.

"Look, I've made many a gaffe in my life, and I suspect I'll make a whole lot more," he told Leno. "But you do worry. You know, I was on a rope…you go down what they call a rope line. You make a speech; there's four, five, six thousand people, and they line up and you shake hands. And everybody has, not everybody, a lot of people have cameras, and they have these little video phones…so I learned to just go, ‘Mm, mm, mm, mm.’ Walk down the line. I don't say anything anymore."

On the day of the final debate, reporters had to interrupt Biden as he waited for a hamburger during a photo-op at a diner in Ohio to ask questions.

Asked dozens of times when Biden would take formally questions from the national reporters who have been following him, Wade said Biden instead favors one-on-one interviews and would hold a press availability “when we have some news to make.”

BIDEN'S BUNGLES: A BLATANT BIAS

Biden's warning

If the prospect of an Obama presidency doesn't make you nervous, Joe Biden's latest comments, reported by ABC News, may change the way you feel:

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you--not financially to help him--we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

As Commentary's Jennifer Rubin notes, this adds up to a pretty good argument for electing a president who is experienced and tough--i.e., John McCain. "This is material for an ad that's a lot more credible than Hillary Clinton's '3 a.m.' ad," observes Rubin. "That one came from his arguably frantic opponent–this one is from his running mate."

Which brings us to yesterday's Obama endorsement from Colin Powell on "Meet the Press." Sour conservatives have noted that endorsements don't generally make much of a difference; that Powell, in making his endorsement so late, when Obama seems a nearly certain winner, is not exactly a profile in political courage; and that Powell has never been much of a Republican to begin with.

All this is true (although this column dissociates itself from the assertion by bitter conservatives that Powell is acting merely out of racial solidarity). Powell is essentially a weathervane, and you don't need one to see which way the wind is blowing. Nonetheless, Powell's endorsement is useful to Obama, particularly at this juncture.

What Powell offers is reassurance. As a military man who has never sought elective office, he stands above politics. His Republican credentials are weak, but that makes him more of a nonpartisan figure. He is a man of the establishment--and if he supports Obama, that will assuage the doubts of some voters who still worry that the young senator is either unready or radical.

Biden's comments yesterday, by contrast, make one wonder why Obama chose as his running mate someone with a propensity for running off his mouth. (We assume it was not because we said we'd find it entertaining.)

In an odd way, Biden's gaffe is reassuring, too. It suggests that the Democrats are not really naive enough to believe that if Obama is elected, everyone will like America again and the world will stop being dangerous.

Yesterday we noted that Joe Biden had warned supporters in Seattle that he expects a major crisis to strike during the first six months of an Obama administration, told them that he expects Obama's response to the crisis to be unpopular, and exhorted them to be prepared to stand by him, even if he appears to be wrong.

Hugh Hewitt thinks he knows what Biden has in mind:

Biden has been receiving the sorts of briefings that nominees receive, and he's been to the sort of meetings where our allies talk candidly of the gathering storm they see coming closer.

And Biden suspects that Obama will react to the coming crisis in a way that demoralizes the country and which shatters public confidence in Obama.

Biden dismisses the ability of the American military to deal with far flung threats, tells the audience "Mark my words," and then preemptively implores them to "be prepared to stick with us," after telling them "we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him."

The most obvious interpretation of this ramble is that an Iran-Israel confrontation is coming, and that if Obama is president, America will sit it out with, at best, words that do nothing to support Israel or deter Iran.

Biden's meaning is nowhere near as clear to us as it is to Hewitt. According to ABC News, which reported the comments, Biden said, "I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," and he "emphasized that the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border is of particular concern."

But let's apply what Biden said to a hypothetical confrontation between Israel and Iran. We'd say Hewitt's reading is a plausible one, but so is the opposite reading. Today, at least, there is little public appetite for another war, and this is especially true among Obama's supporters. Maybe he is preparing them for the necessity of a military strike against Iran, or some other muscular response to a crisis that would make Obama unpopular among the MoveOnCodePink crowd (and that might not immediately overcome the skepticism of hawkish Republicans about whether Obama is strong enough).

The real point here is that we don't know, and some elaboration from Biden of just what he has in mind would be useful for voters who have yet to make up their minds. Could we trouble Biden's traveling press to press him for some answers?

We realize we are at risk of sounding like a broken record, but that Biden comment--which we noted Monday and wrote about again yesterday--is really bothering us. And not just us. In a column for the New York Post, Kirstin Powers, a Democrat, says the media's "scattered coverage" of Joe Biden's disturbing remarks reflect an "incredible bias." Powers and NewsBusters.org both note that even Dan Rather said, "Certainly if Sarah Palin had said this it would be above the fold in most newspapers today."

CBS News reports that Barack Obama pooh-poohed his running mate's comments: "You know I think that Joe sometimes engages in rhetorical flourishes." Or, to put it another way: "We're gonna have an international crisis. . . . It's not gonna be apparent initially . . . that we're right." Only words!

The idea that America's adversaries are likely to test a new administration is not shocking. It seems prudent to prepare for such an eventuality. What's disturbing about Biden's remarks is that he seems to anticipate a domestic crisis of sorts as well--that Obama's response to the crisis will be unpoular among the public, or some segment of it, and that his backers will simply have to have faith. But Biden gives us no clue as to what he thinks Obama will do that will prompt a backlash--or which segment of the public he expects to lash back. To hear Biden tell it, a vote for Obama is a vote for God-and-Joe-Biden-only-know-what.

In the absence of clarity from Biden and Obama, people have begun speculating as to what may lie in store. The Boston Globe reports that in a speech yesterday, Palin picked up on the Biden remarks:

Yesterday in Reno, Nev., Palin told supporters, "I guess we gotta say, 'Well, thanks for the warning, Joe.' " She then imagined the "crisis scenarios," based on what she described as Obama's foreign policy agenda: his pledge to meet with rogue leaders without preconditions, though he has amended that vow; and Obama saying he would go into the tribal areas of Pakistan to go after Osama bin Laden if the Pakistani government wouldn't, though Palin has supported a similar policy.

"Crisis scenario number three," she said, is that Obama's plan for withdrawing US combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office would leave "some 25 million Iraqis at the mercy of Iranian-supported Shi'ite extremists and Al Qaeda in Iraq" and could force US troops to return.

Palin asserted that after the Russian invasion of Georgia in August, "Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence," which could encourage Russia to invade Ukraine next. "That would be crisis scenario number four," she said.

"But I guess the looming crisis that most worries the Obama campaign right now is Joe Biden's next speaking engagement. Let's call that crisis number five," Palin said as supporters laughed uproariously.

But this is not a joke--well, OK, it's not just a joke. There really could be an international crisis--or more than one--in the early days of a new administration, and more specificity about this Biden warning would be helpful in evaluating whether an Obama presidency is too risky--or whether we should take comfort that his instincts would be the right ones.

The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz points to one possible crisis:

Senior Tehran officials are recommending a preemptive strike against Israel to prevent an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear reactors, a senior Islamic Republic official told foreign diplomats two weeks ago in London.

The official, Dr. Seyed G. Safavi, said recent threats by Israeli authorities strengthened this position, but that as of yet, a preemptive strike has not been integrated into Iranian policy.

The Ha'aretz report does not discuss the U.S. response to a possible Iranian strike against Israel, although Safavi does say "that a victory by U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama would pave the way for dialogue with Washington, while a John McCain presidency would bolster Iran's extreme right, which opposes dialogue."

Yesterday we noted Hugh Hewitt's theory that Biden was warning that an Obama administration would not support Israel in a confrontation with Iran. We noted that Biden's remark was open to multiple interpretation and asked for clarification for voters' sake. Reader Ray Hendel observes: "What may be more important is a clarification so Iran does not interpret Biden's remarks the way Hugh Hewitt does and see it as a green light."

Meanwhile, "IJane," a contributor to the Hillary Clinton Forum, a dead-ender Web site, speculates that Obama's response to whatever crisis arises will be to impose a military draft. She quotes from Obama's comment at a widely ignored Columbia University forum last month:

But it's also important that a president speaks to military service as an obligation not just of some, but of many. You know, I traveled, obviously, a lot over the last 19 months. And if you go to small towns, throughout the Midwest or the Southwest or the South, every town has tons of young people who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's not always the case in other parts of the country, in more urban centers. And I think it's important for the president to say, this is an important obligation. If we are going into war, then all of us go, not just some.

Let's throw this open and see if we can shed some light on Biden's mysterious and troubling remark. If you have an idea of what he meant, email us at opinionjournal@wsj.com. We'll compile the best ones and include them in a column soon. If Obama and Biden won't tell us what they mean, maybe we can figure it out ourselves.

The Increasingly Erratic, Super-Gaffetastic Joe Biden Be afraid. Be very afraid.

"We're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy"

If the prospect of an Obama presidency doesn't make you nervous, Joe Biden's latest comments, reported by ABC News, may change the way you feel:

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you--not financially to help him--we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

After speaking for just over a quarter of an hour, Biden noticed the media presence in the back of the small ballroom.

"I probably shouldn't have said all this because it dawned on me that the press is here," he joked.


As Commentary's Jennifer Rubin notes:

Well, golly, if Obama is so untested that we will have a series of international crises — at the very time we are in a financial meltdown — which will make the Cuban Missille Crisis look like a walk in the park, shouldn’t we vote for the other guy who will keep all the miscreants in their place? Now, maybe we should rest easy because, according to Biden, “I’ve forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know, so I’m not being falsely humble with you.” (Maybe Hezbollah’s occupation of Lebanaon was one of the things he forgot.)

Something tells me this is material for an ad that’s a lot more credible than Hillary Clinton’s “3 a.m.” ad. That one came from his arguably frantic opponent–this one is from his running mate.

UPDATE:

Rudy Giuliani and Randy Scheunemann, McCain-Palin Foreign Policy Adviser, just completed a media call on the Joe Biden comments. Scheunemann invoked Michael Kinsley — a gaffe is when a politician is caught speaking the truth. Giuliani dubbed the remarks “extraordinary” and said that he never recalled a VP candidate announcing that electing his candidate would provoke multiple challeneges to test his mettle. Giuliani suggested that Biden must “continue to harbor serious doubts” about Barack Obama’s readiness to be commander-in-chief.

At the conclusion of the call, both McCain surrogates urged the press to start asking Biden what he meant. Giuliani remarked that only Biden knows for sure what he meant, but that Biden’s remarks that the Obama camp would need the support of the top donors because they might not “get it right in a crisis. . . totally baffles me.” They both observed that, had a Republican made the remarks, it would be on the front page of the New York Times.

Bottom line: the mega-gaffe came at a remarkably good moment for McCain. The McCain camp certainly hopes it will have as great or greater an impact as the Colin Powell endorsement. But given the MSM declared priority–getting The One elected–I suspect they won’t be staying up late to check the Gray Lady’s front page for Tuesday.

Biden's Fantasy World

In the popular media wisdom, Sarah Palin is the neophyte who knows nothing about foreign policy while Joe Biden is the savvy diplomatic pro. Then what are we to make of Mr. Biden's fantastic debate voyage last week when he made factual claims that would have got Mrs. Palin mocked from New York to Los Angeles?

AP

Start with Lebanon, where Mr. Biden asserted that "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."

The U.S. never kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, and no one else has either. Perhaps Mr. Biden meant to say Syria, except that the U.S. also didn't do that. The Lebanese ousted Syria's military in 2005. As for NATO, Messrs. Biden and Obama may have proposed sending alliance troops in, but if they did that was also a fantasy. The U.S. has had all it can handle trying to convince NATO countries to deploy to Afghanistan.

Speaking of which, Mr. Biden also averred that "Our commanding general in Afghanistan said the surge principle in Iraq will not work in Afghanistan." In trying to correct him, Mrs. Palin mispronounced the general's name -- saying "General McClellan" instead of General David McKiernan. But Mr. Biden's claim was the bigger error, because General McKiernan said that while "Afghanistan is not Iraq," he also said a "sustained commitment" to counterinsurgency would be required. That is consistent with Mr. McCain's point that the "surge principles" of Iraq could work in Afghanistan.

Then there's the Senator's astonishing claim that Mr. Obama "did not say he'd sit down with Ahmadinejad" without preconditions. Yet Mr. Biden himself criticized Mr. Obama on this point in 2007 at the National Press Club: "Would I make a blanket commitment to meet unconditionally with the leaders of each of those countries within the first year I was elected President? Absolutely, positively no."

Or how about his rewriting of Bosnia history to assert that John McCain didn't support President Clinton in the 1990s. "My recommendations on Bosnia, I admit I was the first one to recommend it. They saved tens of thousands of lives. And initially John McCain opposed it along with a lot of other people. But the end result was it worked." Mr. Biden's immodesty aside, Mr. McCain supported Mr. Clinton on Bosnia, as did Bob Dole even as he was running against him for President in 1996 -- in contrast to the way Mr. Biden and Democratic leaders have tried to undermine President Bush on Iraq.

Closer to home, the Delaware blarney stone also invited Americans to join him at "Katie's restaurant" in Wilmington to witness middle-class struggles. Just one problem: Katie's closed in the 1980s. The mistake is more than a memory lapse because it exposes how phony is Mr. Biden's attempt to pose for this campaign as Lunchbucket Joe.

We think the word "lie" is overused in politics today, having become a favorite of the blogosphere and at the New York Times. So we won't say Mr. Biden was deliberately making events up when he made these and other false statements. Perhaps he merely misspoke. In any case, Mrs. Palin may not know as much about the world as Mr. Biden does, but at least most of what she knows is true.

Palin and Populism

She killed. She had him at "Nice to meet you. Hey, can I call you Joe?" She was the star. He was the second male lead, the good-natured best friend of the leading man. She was not petrified but peppy.

The whole debate was about Sarah Palin. She is not a person of thought but of action. Interviews are about thinking, about reflecting, marshaling data and integrating it into an answer. Debates are more active, more propelled—they are thrust and parry. They are for campaigners. She is a campaigner. Her syntax did not hold, but her magnetism did. At one point she literally winked at the nation.

As far as Mrs. Palin was concerned, Gwen Ifill was not there, and Joe Biden was not there. Sarah and the camera were there. This was classic "talk over the heads of the media straight to the people," and it is a long time since I've seen it done so well, though so transparently. There were moments when she seemed to be doing an infomercial pitch for charm in politics. But it was an effective infomercial.

Joe Biden seems to have walked in thinking that she was an idiot and that he only had to patiently wait for this fact to reveal itself. This was a miscalculation. He showed great forbearance. Too much forbearance. She said of his intentions on Iraq, "Your plan is a white flag of surrender." This deserved an indignant response, or at least a small bop on the head, from Mr. Biden, who has been for five years righter on Iraq than the Republican administration. He was instead mild.

The heart of her message was a complete populist pitch. "Joe Six-Pack" and "soccer moms" should unite to fight the tormentors who forced mortgages on us. She spoke of "Main Streeters like me." A question is at what point shiny, happy populism becomes cheerful manipulation.

Sarah Palin saved John McCain again Thursday night. She is the political equivalent of cardiac paddles: Clear! Zap! We've got a beat! She will re-electrify the base. More than that, an hour and a half of talking to America will take her to a new level of stardom. Watch her crowds this weekend. She's about to get jumpers, the old political name for people who are so excited to see you they start to jump.

Nice Try: Palin is still standing.

When Joe Met Sarah

If a Biden Commits a Gaffe In the Forest…

Biden Was Wrong On the Cold War