Boris Johnson, the new mayor of London, offers an endorsement that merely embarrasses the endorser. He finds many reasons for hoping "Barack Hussein Obama" wins and, curiously, uses the middle name that has become the H-word in polite society here. "He seems highly intelligent," the mayor wrote in an op-ed in the London Daily Telegraph. "He has an air of courtesy and sincerity. Unlike the current occupant of the White House, he has no difficulty in orally extemporizing a series of grammatical sentences, each containing a verb." This was so over the top that Toby Harnden, the Washington correspondent for the Telegraph, felt compelled to apologize for the newspaper.
"What's his argument?" he asked. "Boiled down, Boris thinks that Obama is courteous, intelligent, sincere and speaks well. Oh, yes, and he is black. Shades of Joe Biden's patronizing remark that Obama was 'the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.'"
Speaking of Biden, which almost nobody does, the vintage Joe emerged in Seattle, predicting that Obama will soon tank like Wall Street, but not until after the election: "I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, 'Oh, my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down? Why is this thing so tough? We're gonna have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years. So I'm asking you now, be prepared to stick with us. Remember the faith you had at this point because you're going to have to reinforce us."
When Joe saw a reporter in the back of the ballroom, he paled, stopped talking and beat it. Why couldn't he have settled for a bumper sticker or a sign in the front yard?