Joe Biden Said That?

This is a borderline case since Biden's press office denies that he leaked any sensitive information. But that's par for the course. Fox News reports that Biden ""said a young naval officer giving him a tour of the residence showed him the hideaway, which is behind a massive steel door secured by an elaborate lock with a narrow connecting hallway lined with shelves filled with communications equipment."

Well, what are we to make of this? We have no video, the presence of which is always a clincher. The quote is credited to Eleanor Clift, who is an editor at Newsweek. Her articles indicate that she believes in hope and change, which gives this report even more credibility. You decide!

Alert reader nemov found a classic from 2006. Biden was joking around at an appearance in New Hampshire and said:

"You cannot go into a 7-11 or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. Oh, I'm not joking."

What a joker! Oh wait. He wasn't joking. Here's the incriminating evidence:

Keep 'em coming, folks!

Alert readers Justin Taylor and Michael Gross sent me this gem. During the 1987 campaign, Biden made a somewhat aggressive response to a question about his educational background:

”I think I have a much higher I.Q. than you do.”

He went on to tout his vast academic plaudits:

One problem is that it's not really the done thing to boast of your superiority while looking for votes. But a second problem is that Biden's claims simply weren't true. For the full details see this article on hotair.com.

Sharp-eyed reader mesquito brought this item to my attention. This was way back in 1987 when Biden was making a run for president and gave a speech containing this pearl:

“Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family to ever go to a university? Was it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? Is it because they didn’t work hard, my ancestors who worked in the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours? It’s because they didn’t have a platform upon which to stand.”

Somewhat incoherent, but, that's what you get. The real problem, though, was that the Labor Party's Neil Kinnock had given a speech earlier that year and said:

“Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because our predecessors were thick? Was it because they were weak, those people who worked eight hours underground and then come up and play football, weak? It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand.”

What's the Levenshtein distance on that one? Not much. And besides, it simply wasn't true. A strange episode, and it torpedoed Biden's candidacy.

Jonah was kind enough to mention this humble site; greetings!

A bit off-topic, but for those National Review old-timers among you, who can identify the year in which this quote appeared in NR?

Looks like a mandate for greed and selfishness. Or maybe a mandate for Armageddon?

I know I'm not the only one to have fond memories of that issue...

In Sept 2008 Biden was on CBS news discussing the Great Depression. Disaster struck:

"When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened,'"

That's fine, except that TV wasn't introduced until 1939 and Hoover was still president in 1929 when the market plunged. A two-fer!

Anyhow, thanks to alert reader Janet Kempf, here's the video:

For this quote we go back to April 2009 as Biden weighed in on the swine flu:

"I would tell members of my family, and I have, I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places right now. It's not that it's going to Mexico, it's that you are in a confined aircraft. When one person sneezes, it goes everywhere through the aircraft. That's me."

But see for yourself; the fun starts around 2:40:

Classic stuff!

From the campaign trail of 2008 we remember a few classics collected by Daniel Kurtzman. The finest of this small sampling:

"Look, John's last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number-one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs."

Yes, we here in July 2009 agree fully as we watch the unemployment rate drive ever-northwards.

Daniel also includes the classic 'Stand up Chuck' which must be seen to be believed:

Can that be topped? Stay tuned!

Jim Geraghty put together a few classic quotes in this article. Perhaps the finest Biden-ism of the bunch is this now almost forgotten beauty:

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

Hard to top that! But a prescient quote from a campaign ad is also worth reproducing:

“When this campaign is over, political slogans like ‘experience’ and ‘change’ will mean absolutely nothing. The next president has to act.”

At last we agree! Read the whole article; Geraghty has gathered a nicely representative set of quotes.

...and this blog was created. From his perch on National Review's "The Corner" he wrote:

I'm working on something about Biden, and while I have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to gaffe material, I was wondering if anyone has seen a Biden Gaffe Clearinghouse of some kind. It seems to me a BGC would be a valuable national service.

Yes, we look forward to the next several years of gathering material. Speak to us, Mr Vice President!