Question: why did Obama pick Biden, whom he despised, as his vice president?

Answer: because he despised him.

John Podhoretz writes in the New York Post:

A quarter-century ago, Sen. Joseph I. Biden of Delaware, then in his third term, came in for a lunch with a few editors and reporters at the newspaper where I worked. Its editor welcomed Biden and asked him a question about whatever story was at the top of the news agenda that day.

Biden started talking. And talking. And talking. He spoke and he gesticulated. He wandered off into secondary subjects, and secondary subjects of the secondary subjects. He conjured up a memory of his childhood, and then told a tale from his first campaign.

After 20 minutes without so much as a breath, it was clear to me and others around the table that there was something wrong—that our guest simply did not know how to conclude his peroration.

We shifted in our chairs. Someone coughed. Someone else sighed. The door loomed behind us, tormenting us with the blessings of an escape we simply could not make.

It was not until 45 minutes after he had begun that Joseph I. Biden simply ran out of gas. He came to no conclusion, no closing thought. He just stopped talking, looked down, and at last took a bite of food and drank some water.

I had never been through anything like it. Biden had displayed a literally clinical display of logorrhea, a term Google defines for me as “pathologically incoherent, repetitive speech.”

That condition has never gone away. On April 3 of this year, Biden appeared at a high school in Norfolk, Va., where he was asked a question about gas prices.

“I’m going to give you a brief answer,” he said. “I’m going to give it to you as quick and as straight as I can.”

He then proceeded to speak … for 11 minutes. You can watch the video. It’s a little bit like watching Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man.” Biden walked back and forth, making little eye contact with the audience, as his thoughts poured out of his mouth. Going on. And on.

He spent decades in the Senate doing just this, which was permissible since there are no limits imposed on the amount of time a senator may speak. In her book, “The Obamas,” Jodi Kantor tells a story about Barack Obama, in the first of his three years in the Senate, listening to an endless Biden oration. The future president scribbled a note to an aide. It said: “Kill. Me. Now.”

So why did Obama choose Biden as his running mate? And why is he keeping Biden on as his running mate?

Podhoretz’s answer:

One is forced to conclude that Obama chose Biden because he wanted a running mate who would have no independent standing whatever.

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Larry T. writes:

In the Samuel Alito confirmation hearings in 2005, senators were allowed one hour to question the nominee. I watched the Biden/Alito segment. Biden spoke for 55 minutes, Alito five. I remember Alito looking perplexed in his chair.

Biden is in love with the sound of his own voice. What’s that old joke about making sure the mind is engaged before putting the mouth in gear? For a long time, he was one of most tiresome people in the senate. When Biden turns senile, no one will be able to tell the difference.

Dean Ericson writes:

Because the empty black suit felt more comfortable with an empty white suit.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 20, 2012 01:05 PM | Send