Just How Long Has Biden Been a Senator?
August 25th, 2008 at 05:46am Mark Noonan
Gay Patriot points it out:
I suppose as the weekend passes, I may have more to say about presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama’s choice of Delaware’s senior Senator as his running mate. For the moment, I will echo Bruce’s point that it does seem a lot like George W. Bush’s choice of Dick Cheney in 2000, an older political veteran with foreign policy experience from a small state that was already a lock for their party.
But, Cheney, unlike Biden, actually had some executive experience, having served as White House Chief of Staff under President Gerald R. Ford and as Defense Secretary under President George H.W. Bush. Joe Biden has spent well over half his life the Senate, having served there since Barack Obama was eleven years old. (emphasis added)
On the day Joe Biden was first elected to the United States Senate, I was a couple weeks shy of my 8th birthday. This isn’t as bad as Ted Kennedy (who became a Senator before I was born), but it does show the vast gulf of time and experience between Biden and real life. While Biden talks a great game of being one of us, the fact that he’s lived in the Senatorial coocoon since I was a regular viewer of Bugs Bunny indicates that he just might not be aware of what day to day life for Joe Average is like. Obama said in his intro for Biden that the good Senator has been bringing change to DC “for decades”. Lets have a look at that, shall we?
In 1972 gasoline was 36 cents a gallon. We were about quarter century away from the first major school shooting incident. The median price for a house was about $65,000.00. The de-facto legalisation of pornography under Miller vs California was a year away. The Roe decision legalising abortion nationwide was also a year in the future. Everyone who was paying attention learned just how big a threat terrorism was during the 1972 Olympics. We were still some years away from HBO first putting obscene language on television - and cable television at that, and plenty of warnings from the network prior to broadcast. “Rap” was a hip phrase meaning “talk”. Gangsters were terrible criminals no one would want to emulate. A majority of African-American babies were born to married couples. Illegal immigration wasn’t a problem, yet.
Thank goodness we had Biden in the Senate, so that he could make certain that things changed, huh?
Entry Filed under: Campaign 2008, Democrats
13 Comments
1. gotbrains? | August 25th, 2008 at 8:06 am
While you’re criticizing the number 2 guy on the Dem ticket for having served in the Senate for a long time, you do realize that the number 1 guy on the Republican side has been in congress since 1982 - right?
So McCain has been in congress for going on 3 decades. This is especially ironic now that McCain has a new ad that starts out “Washington is broken”. The ad also pretty much states that the last 4 years have been horrible under Bush, and pretty much lays all the blame at Bush’s doorstep. Seems McCain is big on dishing out blame, but is rather reticent to take any responsibility.
2. hermie | August 25th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Trolls still can’t defend their guy.
Obama crew lashes out at ‘old white men’, and Obama chooses an ‘old white man’
Obama crew lashes out against ‘Washington Insiders’ and Obama chooses a Washingon Insider.
Obama crew lashes out against “partisan politicians’, and Obama chooses one of the most partisan Dems around.
Obama crew lashes out against ‘Washingotn lobbyists’, while Obama chooses a Senator who has conflicts of interest regarding lobbyists.
Obama always needs a teleprompter to speak, and chooses a guy who needs a teleprompter or else he shoots jhimsslf in the foot.
Obama crew says that experience doesn’t matter, while Obama chooses a guy who says experience does matter, and Obama doesn’t have enough to be President.
3. gotbrains? | August 25th, 2008 at 10:48 am
So out of one side of your mouths, you say experience is all that matters. Then out of the other side of your mouths, you condemn Joe Biden for having so much experience.
And you also seem to make a big deal about statements from Biden that he likes and respects John McCain. But McCain has often also praised Biden:
With all this “experience” hypocrisy, I am going laugh my arse off when McCain picks someone without any as his running mate.
4. hermie | August 25th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Yet again, the trolls can’t defend their 180 degree turn, and can’t reconcile their previous ‘reasons’ for attacking McCain, when their Obamamessiah chose someone with a number of matching attributes.
5. SEW | August 25th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Biden has been a senator at least since 1987. A review of his 88 presidential bid.
Bevis/Butthead 08
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13757
6. OhioOrrin | August 25th, 2008 at 11:29 am
this is rich…
the dems have decided to allow FULL delegate votes 4 Florida & Michigan!
comeon lefties, now lets here how important ur “rules” are which can’t be allowed to be broken w/o consequences!
7. SEW | August 25th, 2008 at 11:52 am
You mean terrorism was around in 1972?But the evil Bush/Rove/Cheney guys, where were they? I thought terrorism started after they stole the election in 2000!
Bevis/Butthead08
8. William of Orange | August 25th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
“..The median price for a house was about $65,000.00..”
Good three-bedroom houses in Southern California, a mile away from the beach, could be had for $25-35,000 with a $3,000 down payment.”
And, more importantly, the garish, omnipresent bicentennial celbrations and memorabilia, the nauseating DIsco craze, and the ineffectual Jimmy Carter (a.k.a., The first Coming of Barak Obama) were four years away.
It was clearly a simpler time.
9. Rich | August 25th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Biden looks alot like the guys on all those dollar bills doesn’t he?
10. Jon Parker | August 25th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
You know, I’ve constantly been baffled how a basically nice, thoughtful guy like Mark could support such wrong-headed policies on every level. I don’t agree with him on anything, but I like him. I really do. That’s why I bookmarked this blog.
I’ve finally figured it out. Mark, I implore you, for the good of the nation, start watching Bugs Bunny again.
11. Dennis | August 25th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Cheney, unlike Biden, actually had some executive experience, having served as White House Chief of Staff under President Gerald R. Ford and as Defense Secretary under President George H.W. Bush.
By the end of the first Bush administration, others had come to the conclusion that Cheney and his followers were dangerous. “They were referred to collectively as the crazies,” recalls Ray McGovern, a CIA professional who interpreted intelligence for presidents going back to Kennedy. Around the same time, McGovern remembers, Secretary of State James Baker and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft counseled the elder President Bush, “Keep these guys at arm’s length.”
As vice president, Cheney has been the decisive force pushing America into war. In the inner councils of the administration, it was he who emasculated Colin Powell, cut the State Department out of effective policymaking, foisted fake reports on the intelligence agencies and supplanted the National Security Council. It was also Cheney who placed appointees personally loyal to him, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, in charge of the Pentagon and speckled the warmaking bureaucracy with desk officers culled from neoconservative Washington think tanks — ideologues with no military experience.
“They were like cancer cells,” says retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked on the Defense Department’s Near East and South Asia desk during the buildup to the Iraq war. “They didn’t care about the truth. They had an agenda. I’d never seen anything like it. They deformed everything.”
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6450422?rnd=1131491214234&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.872
12. Mark Noonan | August 26th, 2008 at 12:16 am
Jon,
While we all must become as little children in order to enter the Kingdom, I don’t think I can start watching Bugs again - it seems that those cartoons no longer appeal to the jaded appetite of youth.
13. Mark Noonan | August 26th, 2008 at 12:51 am
Dennis,
Karen Kwiatkowski is a kook who is featured over at Lew Rockwell…if that is the place you go for info, you’ll never lack for moonshine.