Biden’s Blooper

At a time when the war in Iraq is going miserably, General George Casey, the officer who oversaw the mess that is now the American experience in Iraq is about to be promoted to supervise the entire army. Troubles in the Middle East continue to steam and percolate. Bad news roars out of Africa. The harsh and cruel realities of global warming gain more credibility almost every week. There is an absurdist drama unfolding in Boston as a bureaucratic post 9 -11 mentality collides with reckless guerilla marketers. We are in the middle of the annual celebration of commercials and capitalism, hyperbole and hype, glisten and glitter known as the run-up to the Super Bowl. And if all that did not provide enough for people to write, talk, and argue about, many were in a mood to criticize what was obviously a well-intentioned but inelegant comment from the Senior Senator from Delaware, Joe Biden.

For Joe Biden last Wednesday was supposed to be a good day. He was beginning his formal presidential campaign. And he had one quality none of the top tier candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have—a surplus of international experience. When Biden joined the Senate way back in 1973, Hillary Clinton was doing a year of post-graduate study at Yale. She hadn’t even met the man many would later call “Slick Willy.” Barak Obama was a seven-year-old living in Jakarta, Indonesia.

As he took the first official steps of his presidential bid, Biden was supposed to look confident and experienced. But in an interview with a reporter from The New York Observer, Biden said Senator Obama was "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."

As Senator Biden later noted, if he had substituted “fresh” for clean, the comment would not have provoked the uproar it did.

The Reaction

To suggest that Biden’s comment provoked controversy is to imply that the tsunami of trappings, the plethora of parties, the overpriced commercials, and the vast quantities of glitz that make up the Super Bowl experience are all part of an exercise in restraint and modesty.

Soon it was obvious that Biden had committed a blunder.

Biden did what any political veteran should do. Via the privacy the telephone offers, he apologized to Obama. In public he apologized some more. Four hours after the original comment was posted on-line, Biden issued a statement, ''I deeply regret any offense my remark in the New York Observer might have caused anyone. That was not my intent.''

He tried to soften the comments by putting them in the context of a phrase his mother often invoked, “clean as a whistle.”

He dropped in on The Daily Show and hoped to put a comic spin on what quickly became an awful day for the Senator.

The comment allowed pundits and those courageous warriors on conservative talk radio to note that this was not the first time the Senator had put a foot in one of his orifices. Last summer, while C-Span’s cameras were on, Biden spoke to an Indian-American activist and commented, "You cannot go into a Dunkin' Donuts or a 7-Eleven unless you have a slight Indian accent." There also was that ugly moment in the Senator’s 1988 president bid when he was accused of plagiarizing speeches delivered by a British Labor Party leader—Neil Kinnock. His presidential bid ended soon after the accusation.

Biden’s gaffe is most unfortunate. He is a smart guy with a lot to offer his party and his country. His proposal to divide Iraq into three federations is one of the few on any table that might reduce Iraqi sectarian violence. His years of experience might help the Democrats balance a ticket where the presidential candidate is sorely lacking tenure.

But there are other issues circulating within the hubbub his comment provoked that cut to the heart of the way the complicated mêlée we oh so politely refer to as politics is played in the US.

Truth has an uneasy place in American political life. Americans have long responded to fear (and loathing). We lap up American chauvinism—especially when it is married with narrow-mindedness. Americans almost always find the flights of fancy politicians and the media dish out far more interesting and provocative than the often bad old fashioned truth.

Obama’s Tap Dance

Biden’s most recent verbal flub allowed Senator Clinton, who has recently displayed periods where she appeared to be omnipresent, to spend a day away from the national political limelight. Biden’s comment gave Senator Obama a chance to perform a political tap dance even a veteran pol could envy. Via a prepared statement, the Illinois Senator responded, "I didn't take Senator Biden's comments personally, but obviously they were historically inaccurate. African-American presidential candidates like Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton gave a voice to many important issues through their campaigns, and no one would call them inarticulate.''

Obama wisely responded with a comment about how many African-American candidates were articulate. But it wasn’t the comment Biden made about Obama being articulate that provoked controversy.

Nor was Biden’s comment directed at Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, or Al Sharpton. None were “mainstream” candidates.

Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 national political campaign was engaged to give black politicians an aura of legitimacy.

In 2004 Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton conducted presidential campaigns that were more exercises in vanity than serious politics—though the clouds of rhetoric that tended to gravitate around Sharpton’s campaign often were leavened with his jovial nature and discerning wit. During the 2004 presidential campaign, after Howard Dean’s scream shattered his image as a bright, promising, and credible candidate, Sharpton commented, “I wanted to say to Governor Dean, don't be hard on yourself about hooting and hollering. If I had spent the money you did and got 18 percent, I'd still be in Iowa hooting and hollering.”

Sharpton responded to Biden’s blunder by stating that he took a bath every day.

Biden’s comments were about mainstream candidates. Other than Obama, the only African American mainstream political candidate for the presidency has been Jesse Jackson.

Center of the Controversy

This brings us to the center of the controversy Biden’s comments provoked—the use of the word “clean.” The first responders to the comment used the word in the context of personal hygiene—and all the ugly racist and inelegant inferences that may be drawn from it.

It wasn’t meant to address such matters.

It is possible that Biden was referring to rumors. Many suggest that for the services Jackson provided as he campaigned for candidate Bill Clinton in 1992, the good Reverend charged a great deal of money. If the rumors are accurate, neither Jackson nor the then candidate Clinton violated either the letter of the campaign laws or the spirit of American entrepreneurialism. But the transactions certainly weren’t clean.

It is more likely that Biden was referring to the liaisons Jackson had with a woman who was not his wife. When revelations about the relationship were made public, Jackson who often was accused of never meeting a microphone he didn’t like, withdrew from the microphones and the attention he is so brilliant at garnering.

So the young upstart Obama executed a savvy dodge—he did not address Jackson’s political hygiene, he did not really address the whole truth of Biden’s comment, and won praise for being sober and conciliatory. While Biden told what many consider a verifiable truth—and got skewered for it.

Such is life in America.

An obvious lesson of all of this is that Senator Biden never should have put himself in a situation where he made a comment that though true, could provoke controversy. It is likely that before Senator Biden’s first day in the presidential race was over, he and others realized that it is not experience that really matters, it is learning the lessons it is so willing to teach that counts. Clearly the experienced Senator has a lot to learn.

And Finally

But there is a larger lesson. Every candidate fumbles. In 1992 then candidate Bill Clinton made some silly comments about not inhaling marijuana. During that campaign, Clinton made many imprudently vague comments about women he was accused of having an extra-marital affair with. These comments often did not end the controversy, they continued it. George W. Bush’s actions prior to his 40th birthday may be viewed as one long and erratic fumble. In 1963 the woman who would become his wife was seventeen and driving to a party with some friends. She committed what was obviously a severe error in judgment and did not stop for a stop sign. Her car rammed into another and killed the only person in it—one of her classmates.

Clinton trudged through the dark and grey wildernesses his unwise comments elicited and became President.

When asked about his youth, George W. Bush told a story that always sounded something like this, "I know there are all kinds of rumors, but that's the political process. Let me tell you something. When people investigate my background, they're going to find that I have been loyal to my wife for 21 years, and that I've been a dedicated dad, and that, given the responsibility of the high office of my state, I have brought honor and dignity to that office." The rumors that related to Bush’s drinking and cocaine use were recently verified by a former “friend.” But years before that happened, when Bush was seeking to be elected president, he was often asked about his checkered past. The story Bush told created coils of protective concertina wire for the candidate.

George W. Bush survived his reckless past and was twice elected President. And today Laura Bush is now one of the most admired people in America.

Certainly for those who hope to entertain the idea of spending decades in American politics, it is better to act as Obama did last week. Dancing around and dodging the truth usually is a much better tactic than telling the truth—as Biden did. Many who spend their professional lives observing and commenting on politicians of all shapes and political colorings conclude that when a politician makes a mess, those who have a long career in one of the strangest and oldest of professions either suffer through (a la Clinton) or extricate themselves relatively cleanly (a la George W. Bush).

But there probably is something else at work as well. Those rare few who play the game at a high level for a long time seem to have a special armor that not only allows them to endure in spite of their mistakes but also to prevail.

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Too Serious A Matter provides intelligent, provocative, and often funny commentary about the often convoluted intersections of politics, strategy, and history. The title of the blog comes from De Gaulle’s comment, “I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”