Saturday, August 23, 2008

Also, hoping for McCain/Huckabee

I'm not wild about Biden, but I'm coming to like him. But what's terrifying is that I think Joe Biden is a decent proxy for the hard-nosed, Irish Catholic Democratic pol that was on the last winning Democratic ticket: Santos-McGarry.

The West Wing's predictive powers continue... spooky. I just hope Biden doesn't suddenly have a heart attack.

Update, with substantive thought: Okay, this is where I'm at as of Saturday evening: Joe Biden is, by all accounts, one of the Democratic politicians most qualified to be President, if we picked them based on actual competence with policy and knowledge of substance -- that is, if they didn't have to run for election. Meanwhile, he's also (with some notable very bad exceptions) a decently progressive politician (see Violence Against Women Act, others.) So actually, the Vice-Presidency is one of the best possible places for him: he's in the executive branch, where he can influence policies that he's most knowledgeable about, and he's been removed from the Congress, which is also possibly a good because he's no longer able to shepherd awful bankruptcy bills for his MBNA overlords. (Remember, he's still only the Veep if he wins.)

He is both a campaigning choice (already, he's lacing in to McCain) and a governing choice (unlike Edwards or Lieberman, but like Al Gore.) On balance, I approve.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

of course, Biden has the most experience, but all of it turned out to be wrong

Against the 1990 decision to defend Sauid Arabia and deter Saddam Hussein

For the Iraq War, and for ethnic sectors which would have been disasterous

Against the actions of Reagan which won the Cold War

So yeah, he might be the best democrat for President, but his judgement just sucks