Ronald Reagan was not impressed with Joe Biden.
In fact, writing in his diary in his usual abbreviated style on
June 15, 1987, Reagan described Biden this way:
He’s smooth but pure demagog [sic]— out to save Am. [America]
from Reagan Doctrine.
That was a year after Reagan made a note about Biden and
Senators Ted Kennedy and Howard Metzenbaum, who were busy making
“vitriolic attacks on TV” about Reagan’s nominee for Chief Justice
of the United States, then Associate Justice William Rehnquist.
Wrote Reagan:
They really are a lynch mob.
As America settles in tonight to watch now-Vice President Biden
face off in debate with Congressman Paul Ryan, whom no one has ever
accused of being either a “smooth but pure demagogue” much less
part of “a lynch mob,” it’s worth a look at exactly why the
nation’s 40th president saw Biden this way — and how
Reagan’s assessment is reflected in the conduct of today’s
Obama-Biden administration. Reagan never recorded of Biden as he is
seen by many today — as a gaffe-prone fool.
Reagan’s point was that no matter the issue — it could have
been the Reagan Doctrine one day or the confirmation of Reagan
appointees the next day (on one occasion Biden smilingly told a
nominee for an obscure government board, “by my definition you are
a racist”) or something else the day after — Joe Biden was always
there to play the role of the “smooth but pure demagogue” — the
hot headed guy in the leftist political lynch mob brandishing the
rope.
For Americans who have watched with alternating amusement and
incredulity, this is precisely the trait that Biden has repeatedly
displayed in the four years of his vice presidency. This is exactly
what was going on when Biden took to a Danville, Virginia podium
back in August and bellowed to a largely African-American
audience:
“Look at what they [Republicans] value, and look at their
budget. And look what they’re proposing. [Romney] said in the first
100 days, he’s going to let the big banks write their own rules —
unchain Wall Street. They’re going to put y’all back in
chains.”
It was what was going on in Iowa the
other day when Biden pushed his class-warfare theme by
saying:
“…we’re going to ask the wealthy to pay more. My heart breaks.
Come on, man.”
To be a demagogue, of course, is to exhibit a personality trait
not a policy. To appeal to prejudice. There is more to all of this
Biden demagoguery than just the theatrical performance of
personality and appeals to prejudice. In the Reagan-era Biden used
— still uses today as Obama’s Number two — the tools of a
demagogue to push specific policies. And he has three policy
favorites in which his addiction to demagoguery most frequently
surface: foreign policy, race, and economics.
In matters of foreign policy, as Reagan noted with Biden’s
opposition to the Reagan Doctrine, Joe Biden was and is still today
as Barack Obama’s vice president a thorough-going partisan of
left-wing, quasi-pacifist foreign policy precepts that effectively
date to FDR’s discredited (and dumped) Vice President Henry
Wallace. Wallace lost out to Harry Truman, his policies losing out
both with post-World War II Democrats and with the country at large
in the election of 1948.
But the same far-left foreign policy principles of Wallace
finally took over the Democrats with the ascension of South Dakota
Senator George McGovern as the Democrats’ nominee in 1972. McGovern
had been a Wallace disciple, a delegate to the 1948 Progressive
Party that nominated Wallace for president to oppose Truman. And it
was in 1972, when McGovern-Democrats swarmed the party apparatus,
that an ambitious 29-year old lawyer — Biden — took on the aging
Republican Senator Caleb Boggs of Delaware and beat him in an
upset.
Reagan specifically noted that Biden was opposed to the Reagan
Doctrine.
Biden certainly wasn’t alone. Every liberal senator breathing in
the 1980s opposed the Reagan Doctrine. What was it? The Reagan
Doctrine, so-named by Charles Krauthammer in a Time
magazine column in April of 1985, was a description of Reagan’s
determination to mount a global challenge to the Soviet Union. The
policy strategy that reflected Reagan’s succinct belief of how to
deal with the decades-old Cold War and the Communist Soviet
Union:
“We win. They lose.”
Senator Biden vehemently opposed the Reagan Doctrine, and took
every opportunity to display that opposition, employing his talents
for demagoguery whether the issue at hand was personnel or
policy.
Yesterday, Reagan biographer Paul Kengor shared a
story about then-Senator Biden’s treatment of William Clark,
Reagan’s appointee in 1981 as Deputy Secretary of State. The story
is a classic of Biden demagoguery for which Reagan had such
disdain. And there’s more to the story.
The humiliation of William Clark was merely the opening round in
Biden’s eight-year crusade to oppose Reagan’s strategy of “we win,
they lose”.
Senator Biden would go on to oppose Reagan’s successful effort
to win the Cold War at every turn, never shy at using the tools of
demagoguery to advance his goals. The Reagan Doctrine, Biden
thundered, should be summed up as the idea that “we [the United
States] will give up something, if they [the Soviets] give up
everything.” In other words, Biden saw Reagan as — yes! — being
unfair to the heirs of Stalin! Really!
From opposing the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka “Star Wars”)
to opposing the Nicaraguan contras to opposing deployment of the MX
missile and more, Biden furiously opposed every Reagan effort to
bring down the Soviets and end the Cold War. Which Reagan ended, as
Margaret Thatcher would later say, “without firing a shot.”
In every single instance Biden would take what might be called
the McGovernite, quasi-pacifist stance, which was repeatedly
colored by Biden’s own insistence on playing politics with foreign
policy (as with everything else).
Biden backed the liberal favorite of a so-called “nuclear
freeze,” which Reagan dismissed out of hand as giving the Soviets a
“huge advantage” in land-based nuclear missiles with multiple
warheads. “Well-meaning or not,” Reagan scoffed, “the nuclear
freeze movement had an agenda that could have been written in
Moscow.” Biden replied by assailing Reagan for not seeking yet
another arms agreement, insisting that if Reagan were serious about
arms control “the freeze movement would evaporate tomorrow.” The
idea that Reagan wanted the Soviet Union to evaporate was something
that simply appalled Biden.
Biden’s demagoguery surfaced again and again and again as he
dealt with Reagan foreign policy.
When Secretary of State George Shultz appeared in front of
Biden’s Foreign Relations Committee to discuss South Africa, Biden
launched again. The Reagan administration staunchly opposed
apartheid but was deeply concerned the country could dissolve in
bloodshed — a bloodletting related in part to the presence of
Cuban troops and a heavy Soviet influence in nearby Angola. Instead
of a rational discussion Biden famously played the demagogue,
furiously attacking the genteel Shultz by saying Reagan’s policy
was “nauseating.” With the cameras running, but of course, Biden
dramatically shouted that:
“People are being mugged and shot, imprisoned, killed
smothered…. these people are dying… you feel frustration, they’re
dying. They are being shot. Children are — They are lining up and
shooting children.”
When Shultz persisted in urging caution, Biden exploded:
“Hell, they’ve [South African blacks] tried compromise for 20
years! They’ve tried everything in their power.”
When Reagan’s “we win, they lose” strategy worked and Soviet
Union was carted off to the ash heap of history against Biden’s
active opposition — wonder of wonders the Cubans left Angola. A
mere two years later, apartheid was gone and Nelson Mandela was
President of South Africa.
But of course, the exchange with Shultz made every mainstream
television newscast — which is to say, every newscast then in
existence.
Noticeably, the New York Times was coming to the same
conclusion about Senator Biden’s standard operating procedure as
Ronald Reagan. The only difference being the Times would
think Biden’s approach just ducky — and never use the word
demagogue.
A week after Biden’s rant on South Africa, the Times
ran a piece by reporter Robin Toner solely focused on Biden’s by
now clearly distinct habit of playing the demagogue — and what it
really meant. Said the Times:
From his angry sparring with Secretary of State George P. Shultz
to his intensive questioning of Associate Justice William H.
Rehnquist, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware has emerged as
an aggressive presence on the Washington stage….
As a result of all this, Democratic activists and analysts say
Mr. Biden has gained heightened recognition as a possible
Presidential contender.
“He, more than any other Democratic candidate [for president in
1988], is aggressively speaking out, becoming visible, and that’s a
key part of the game, especially in the early days,” said Frank
Greer, a Democratic consultant.
Unsurprisingly, the then-chairman of the New Hampshire
Democratic Party agreed, saying the obvious about what Biden’s
style had accomplished:
“His recent activities certainly haven’t hurt him. He’s been on
the front pages here.”
The then vice-chair of the DNC chimed in approvingly:
“It’s name recognition, and it’s becoming known in a way that
imprints in people’s minds. A Senator raising his voice and his
fist in anger at the Secretary of State… is not something you
forget right away.”
Not something you forget right away.
Exactly. That would be the point, and hence Biden’s style of
politicizing everything, including American foreign policy, is
precisely what Reagan saw as the work of the “smooth but pure
demagogue.”
Is there any wonder then as the reports of the discussions
inside the Obama administration over whether or not to pull the
trigger on the Seal Team Six operation to get Osama Bin Laden
proceeded — it was Biden who opposed the operation?
Why?
Reports the November issue of Vanity Fair in excerpting
author Mark Bowden’s new book
The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden, Biden was true
to form. Yes, it was Joe Biden who opposed getting Bin Laden right
to the end. Why?
The vice president was never shy about political calculations.
“Mr. President, my suggestion is: don’t go.” …Biden believed that
if the…the effort failed, Obama could say good-by to a second
term.
In other words, whether he was opposing Reagan on ending the
Cold War by supporting the nuclear freeze and opposing the Reagan
Doctrine, or whether he was opposing President Bush 41 on the
Persian Gulf War, or opposing President Bush 43 on the surge that
finally won the war in Iraq — or opposing President Obama on the
decision to kill Osama Bin Laden, Joe Biden has never changed.
He has missed one foreign policy call after another from Reagan
to Obama. Getting them wrong and wrong again, from ending the Cold
War to getting Osama Bin Laden.
He is to this moment the man Ronald Reagan believed would always
appeal to Americans with the raw emotions of prejudice — using
race, class-warfare, leftist foreign policy or anything else that
was handy.
Joe Biden, Ronald Reagan concluded, was nothing more — or less
— than a “smooth but pure demagogue.”
The Gipper called it as he saw it.
