No commentary on Joe Biden's speech tonight (transcript here) would be complete without reference to this line:
These times require more than a good soldier. They require a wise leader.
To me, at least, this sounds more than a bit dismissive of all the "good soldiers" whose bloodshed and sacrifice ensure that supposed "wise leaders" have the opportunity to cogitate in safety and bloviate at length. What's more, it's pretty hard to cast John McCain as nothing more than a "good soldier" when the contrast -- the "wise leader" -- is supposed to be Barack Obama.
Here, in italics, is all Joe Biden could find to say about Barack's service in the US Senate:
And when he came to Washington, when he came to Washington, John and I watched with amazement how he hit the ground running, leading the fight to pass the most sweeping ethics reform in a generation.
[Note: This is simply a prevarication, as Hugh Hewitt discusses in depth here].
He reached across party lines to pass a law that helped keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists.
[Note: The careful wording is for a reason. Barack actually was allowed essentially to substitute his name as the lead Democratic sponsor to a longstanding bipartisan effort to reduce nuclear stockpiles. As Senate Lugar's contemporaneous press release notes, "The Lugar-Obama initiative is modeled after the Nunn-Lugar program that focuses on weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union. Lugar and former Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) authored the program in 1991."
And then he moved Congress and the president to give our wonderful wounded warriors the care and dignity they deserve.
[Note: Of course, Obama voted against funding those same "wonderful" warriors on the battlefield in 2007 because there wasn't a timeline for withdrawal].
And there you have it, folks. This is all that his own vice president can find to say about the sum total of legislative accomplishments of the Democrat nominee for President.
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