While some people are feverishly working to prevent the next Great Depression, the campaign trail sounds like an episode of the Tonight Show's Jaywalking. The average aspiring entertainer on the streets of Los Angeles (or sometimes a teacher!) is asked "How many varieties of Heinz Ketchup are there?"
They promptly answer: 57.
"Now how many states are in the United States of America?"
Answer: "Um, 57…possibly 58." These people are hilarious.
Maybe Jay should be asking them if they are Democrats or Republicans, because this time it wasn't a topless dancer that showed she didn't know the first thing about the country she lives in, it was the Democrat's nominee for President of the United States, Barack Obama.
One mistake like that is usually enough to seriously damage a presidential nominee if that nominee were either a Republican or Hillary Clinton. Case in point, when John McCain made the far more common mistake of mixing up shia and sunni, a CNN anchor opined that if Joe Lieberman were not there to correct him on the spot, it would have meant the end of McCain's campaign. No one was there to correct Obama's Are You Smarter Than a First Grader answer, and yet his mistake has never been cited by the mainstream media. Like Clinton, Joe Biden told a tale of being under imaginary sniper fire just days ago, claiming his plane was forced down in Afghanistan by an enemy President Bush has failed to fight. That enemy turned out to be weather. Unlike Clinton, Biden has a free pass with the media burying what would ordinarily be a blockbuster of a story.
Now it turns out that Obama believes that the president takes office on Election Day itself rather than in January. In the wake of Lou Dobbs calling for the candidates to suspend their campaigns and take a leadership role in resolving the financial crisis, and McCain's surprise announcement to do just that, Senator Obama responded that keeping to the debate schedule took precedence. He added, "The public needs to hear from the person who, in 40 days will be responsible for taking care of this problem." No, Senator, the current president will still be responsible.
The second most obvious problem with that statement is that the scheduled debate is not about economics. It is a foreign policy debate. So not only does Obama refuse to participate in the domestic legislation of the century, but he instead wants to take that irretrievable moment and throw over discussions of economics for foreign policy. I contend that if the questions are not changed, McCain should refuse to go regardless of whether or not the bailout has passed by then.
Obama's gaffe-of-all-gaffes is one of omission. He claims he wants to change Washington, but he is on a plane to Mississippi at the most critical time in our nation's financial history, refusing to do his job with the puffy claim that if anyone needs him, he will get on the telephone. What Obama has chosen to do is use the financial crisis to politically launder his nineteen-month heel-dragging on debates, hoping to alchemically turn himself into the candidate that insists on a debate even if this revelation comes at the expense of the country. What he won't turn himself into is a leader of his party.
And that takes us back to the walking gaffe machine Joe Biden. His response to the crisis was to find a new fault with President Bush, saying, "In 1929 when the stock market crashed, President Roosevelt got right on television to explain to the American people what was happening." I agree that's quite a contrast to Bush waiting a couple of days. Biden's role model was a real can-do kind of guy. Although one Roosevelt was dead and the next would not be president for years, one of them quickly invented television, distributed millions of sets, and gave that all-important address to the nation.
The person that Senator Biden so admires that was actually in office at the time was in fact Republican Herbert Hoover in the first year of his presidency. Rather than the quick action Biden ascribes to that commander-in-chief, Hoover rejected the idea of corrective legislation until he was running for president again several years later. It is not rare but typical for Joe Biden for fire off a multi-gaffe because his opinions are supported by lies and informed by his breathtaking ignorance.
At a time when John McCain has taken the responsible path as the leader of his party, this well-documented dumbest team to ever run for president wants to sit back and mince words. Dramatic confirmation that Obama does not want to take the risk of having his fingerprints on anything. Does he think he can do that as president?
To the Obama-Biden ticket I say: When do "just words" end, and "just actions" begin?
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