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John Fund says Joe Biden shows the White House has a tiger by the tail.
… The White House has to worry that for the next 82 days Joe Biden will be under tremendous scrutiny — especially given the fact that Paul Ryan has become such a media-attention magnet. Everyone is anticipating the October 11 debate between Biden and Ryan. Biden’s penchant for off-the-cuff remarks doesn’t inspire confidence that he won’t unintentionally blurt something out when facing Ryan. For example, he embarrassed the Obama administration recently by prematurely revealing he was “comfortable” with gay marriage — forcing his boss to suddenly endorse gay marriage on a timetable not of his choosing.
Biden’s erratic statements certainly should make Team Obama nervous. I’ve no doubt that some Democratic strategists would love for Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to swap jobs and bolster the Democratic ticket with a little Clinton magic. But there’s no evidence that Hillary would take that deal. If she wants to run, she is already the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic nomination and would gain no advantage by being yoked to Obama, her old adversary, for the next three months if they lost or the next four years if they won.
So Democrats are stuck with Old Joe, who will turn 70 this November. It’s said that few people vote for a presidential ticket based on who is filling the No. 2 slot. But some do, and they may matter in a very close race. It’s likely that by the time this campaign ends, a lot of people will be more nervous about Joe Biden being a heartbeat away from the presidency than about Paul Ryan.
Joe Biden was the subject of Doug Wilder’s appearance on Neil Cavuto. Daily Caller has the story.
On the Wednesday broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” former Democratic Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder told Vice President Joe Biden: “Slavery is nothing to joke about.”
Wilder, who was the first black American governor since Reconstruction, referred to Biden’s remarks on Tuesday from Danville, Va., calling the rhetoric divisive.
“Well, first of all it is divisive and certainly uncalled for,” Wilder said. “I don’t think the Obama administration needs that at this time. And, as you know, I have not been the most strong supporter of Joe Biden. And yet, we all know he’s gaffe-prone. But when you make a statement that says ‘They are going to put y’all back in chains,’ which means ‘I’m OK — not going to happen to me.’” …
Clive Crook in a column on the Ryan selection put Biden in his place. The rest of the column was not that good and is not included here since we’re respectful of your time.
… So the risk in having a veep-to-be who makes a big impression, good or bad, is mostly on the downside. That’s why it’s traditional to look for a Joe Biden. …
John Kass sees the bigger Biden picture.
… Should Hillary Clinton come to Obama’s rescue? Why should she? When she and Obama faced off for the 2008 presidential nomination, Clinton and her husband, the former president, had the race card played against them by Team Obama. Bill had dared to suggest that Obama’s Democratic primary victory in South Carolina was similar to past victories there by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. For daring to state the obvious, the Clintons were savaged. Bill Clinton said it was Obama’s campaign that injected the race issue.
“I think that they played the race card on me,” a still furious Clinton said in a radio interview after the campaign was over. “And we now know, from memos from the campaign and everything, that they planned to do it all along. I was stating a fact, and it’s still a fact.”
For all his vulgarity and faux-preacher dialect and smarmy pol tricks in Virginia, Biden showed the American people what they can expect from the Obama campaign in the months ahead. And he distilled the Obama re-election effort down to its basic elements:
Class war and race.
Y’all.
Good column from Debra Saunders on the Ryan pick.
… Last year, Newt Gingrich dismissed the Ryan plan as “right-wing social engineering,” then took back his words. Romney said he was “on the same page” as Ryan from the start. That’s not exactly a profile in courage, but in this weak-kneed political climate, it passes for fiscal responsibility.
Biden described the Ryan pick as giving “definition to the vague commitments Romney has made.” I think he’s right.
We know how Romney won the GOP primary game. He was disciplined. He was skilled. He was better than bumbling opponents. He wooed the base with his mantra of tax cuts, tax cuts and more tax cuts.
The general election is a tougher contest. Obama and Biden are pros at promising something for nothing. They’ve convinced their base that the federal government can keep growing, and in a fiscally responsible way, if only Republicans would let them tax the top 2 percent of income earners just a little bit more.
Romney can’t beat the Democratic ticket at that game, but he can beat them by being the adult in the room. In picking the spending-cut-minded Ryan as his running mate, Romney has become more credible.
Thomas Sowell on the choice for voters.
… This election is a test, not just of the opposing candidates but of the voting public. If what they want are the hard facts about where the country is, and where it is heading, they cannot vote for more of the same for the next four years.
But, if what they want is emotionally satisfying rhetoric and a promise to give them something for nothing, to be paid for by taxing somebody else, then Obama is their man. This is not to say that the public will in fact get something for nothing or that rich people will just pay higher taxes, when it is easy for them to escape taxation by investing overseas — creating jobs overseas.
Even if most Americans do not have their own taxes raised, that means little, if they end up paying other people’s taxes in the higher prices of goods and services that pass along the higher taxes imposed on businesses.
There are no doubt voters who will vote on the basis of believing that Obama “cares” more about them. But that is a faith which passeth all understanding. The political mirage of something for nothing, from leaders who “care,” has ruined many a nation.
Kimberley Strassel on the VP pick.
Mitt Romney did much more this weekend than announce a running mate. He unveiled a significant change in strategy. The 2012 election is now a choice, not just a referendum.
Conservatives have spent much of this summer reassuring themselves. They’ve pointed out the extraordinary sums President Obama has thrown at crippling Mr. Romney. They’ve noted how ugly and brutal those attacks have been. They’ve comforted themselves that, for all the smears, Mr. Romney is within a few points of the incumbent in national tracking polls.
Yet the same can be said on the other side. The economy is teetering, the deficit exploding, the nation unhappy with his signature legislation. Daily, Mr. Romney beats the White House with these failures. But he has barely moved the polling dial.
Mr. Romney’s choice of House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, one of the party’s star reformers, is an attempt to break out of the stalemate, change the dynamic. It was foremost a shrewd acknowledgment on Mr. Romney’s part that his path to the White House is going to take more than pointing out the obvious. He needs to run on bold ideas, as Mr. Ryan has, and convince Americans those ideas are the way to prosperity. …
Fred Barnes on the Medicare trap set by the GOP.
President Obama and the Democrats have been ambushed. They blindly walked into the political trap Republicans set for them on Medicare.
Democratic strategists were certain that, with Paul Ryan on the Republican ticket, Medicare had become a better issue than ever for them. How do we know this? Democrats said so.
Ryan is the author of a Medicare reform plan that Democrats insist would “end Medicare as we know it.” That’s their mantra. Mitt Romney, who picked Ryan as his vice presidential running mate last week, has a similar plan of his own.
It didn’t occur to Democrats that Republicans might have devised, tested, and were ready to deliver a response that would put Democrats on the defensive. It’s a double whammy in which Obama and Democrats are held responsible for cutting Medicare spending and using the money to pay for the president’s unpopular health care plan, Obamacare.
Moving quickly, the Romney campaign packaged that two-step response into a crisp, 30-second TV ad that began being aired yesterday. The campaign plans a large buy with the ad, particularly in swing states. …
Bret Stephens paid attention to one of Paul Ryan’s speeches on foreign policy.
… Most foreign-policy speeches by American politicians take the form of untidy piles of verities and clichés. Here, for example, is Barack Obama on China: “As we look to the future, what’s needed, I believe, is a spirit of cooperation that is also friendly competition.” Here he is on the U.N.: “The United Nations can either be a place where we bicker about outdated differences or forge common ground.” Here he is to the British Parliament: “The time for our leadership is now.”
Mr. Ryan doesn’t have the president’s reputation for eloquence. Nor do his speeches ride on the windy drafts of “Yes We Can.” But unlike Mr. Obama, his speeches communicate ideas and arguments, not pieties and emotions.
Thus this speech begins not with a cliché but with a contention: “Our fiscal policy and our foreign policy are on a collision course.” It proceeds, briefly, to demonstrate the point quantitatively: Defense spending in 1970 consumed 39% of the federal budget but takes only 16% today. In the proverbial guns-to-butter ratio, our veins are already clogged.
Next there is history. Why can’t the U.S. simply cede the cumbersome role of world policeman to somebody else? Didn’t Britain do as much in the 1940s? It did. Yet, “unlike Britain, which handed leadership to a power that shared its fundamental values, today’s most dynamic and growing powers do not embrace basic principles that should be at the core of the international system.”
That’s not a novel insight, exactly, but it’s something that needs to be said and is said only rarely. Similarly with Mr. Ryan’s next point: American exceptionalism isn’t a type of jingoism. Instead, it derives from the fact that it was the first nation born of an idea, and from an idea that is true not only for Americans. “America’s foundations,” he says, “are not our own—they belong equally to every person everywhere.” …