The American Spectator

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Biden His Time

8.26.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 2 of 5)

Jeffrey Lord's interesting and delightful piece on Joe Biden reminds me of the Seinfeld episode in which J. Peterman uses Kramer as his surrogate for his life story. Although, in my opinion, Kramer has a heck of lot more character the Joe.
-- Tom Bullock
West Covina, California

I hadn't heard much of this over the weekend as the veep nomination story rolled...but, ever since those days, when his name came up in conversation, I usually called him Joe "The Plagiarist" Biden. The story made an impression on me, an impression that stayed.

So it's still out there...and, I suppose, we'll be hearing more of it.
-- Robert Nowall
Cape Coral, Florida

Thank you, Mr. Lord, for sharing with readers your part in calling to our attention the character flaws of Joe Biden. We will be hearing a lot about this being "old news." In 1988 when it was new news, many casting their votes in November 2008 had not been born. So, it all bears repeating.

Joe is a born dissembler. He stretches the truth, embroiders the facts and plagiarizes when he likes the sound of other's words. The truth cannot really be diluted. A half truth is a whole lie.

You were not alone in tipping Dowd. John Sasso, Dukakis's guy was furious that Biden had copped Neil Kinnock's biography word for word -- "Why am I the only Kinnock in a thousand generations...." "Why am I the only Biden in a thousand generations..." He was furious that the press had not picked up on it. (It was ever thus.) Sasso sent Dowd the tape of Biden without the knowledge of straight-arrow Dukakis and ultimately had to resign Dukakis;' campaign over it. Recall... first Dukakis "spanked" him with a two-week leave of absence. And when that wouldn't do, asked for his resignation. Think of it, Sasso has to resign because he called to the nation's attention that Biden was a speech thief.

According to a book published in 1992, What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer (lest I plagiarize -- certainly nothing is original with an old lady sitting in South San Francisco!) Dick Gephardt's campaign tanked because the "dirty trick" blame had shifted to them (before Sasso 'fessed up) because Pat Caddell (Biden's guy) suspected it was Doak and Shrum of Gephardt's bunch that had supplied the tape. Although, why it was considered a dirty trick to tell the truth about a candidate eludes me.

In politics, you gotta know the players and their loyalty to play the game. And as it changes daily, you still can't play it with any certainty. Still, I try.

Joe is a facile liar, just like Bill, just like Hillary. On C-Span he shot off at someone that his IQ was higher than theirs. (Lord save us for the IQ braggarts). At one point he claimed he had three degrees. Why were two not enough? Why was it necessary yesterday to state his wife was gorgeous AND had her doctorate? Some insecurity never goes away.

At Syracuse when a brief was due and he was back-to-the-wall for time, he lifted from Fordham Law Review enough to "cut and paste" and turn in a slipshod brief. For that he was flunked and had to repeat the course. He claims it was laziness, not dishonesty.

When Biden visited Archmere, his old high school, for his son's football game, he sought out the old, retired dean/headmaster(?) to apologize for having claimed he was "the Speaker" at his High School Graduation when in fact, his only part was in introducing participants.... It is truly stunning how lying weasels wish to be well thought of. I have never observed this neediness in ordinary honest folks.

If you need to lie about your high school graduation and how important you were, if you need to cheat in college, if you need to lie about the number of degrees you have, if you need to plagiarize the work of others, when do those kinds of needs stop? What kind of lies lie in store for us?

But, he is Obama's choice. For the next two months we will endure the "Chicklet" teeth framed by the killer grin, contradicted by hard, unsmiling eyes. Anyone who reads it differently has never watched a high stakes poker game.

I laughed today when a clip of Obama was run with him saying he would like to get past the kind of slash and burn campaigning that has characterized other campaigns. I guess the rest of that sentence is, "And so I have selected Joe Biden to do the slash and burn part so I can keep my word."
-- Diane Smith

This needs to be submitted to the editorial desk of the WaPo.

Letter to the Editor

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