[THEWEEK] Former Vice President Joe Foreign Policy Whiz KidBiden
...The former Senator-for-Life from Delaware, an example of the kind of top-notch Washington intellect to be found in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body...
gave perhaps the most disastrous performance by a frontrunner in the history of presidential primary debates on Thursday night. Throughout the evening, Biden sounded aloof and evasive. There was not a single moment when his words or behavior suggested the ease and confidence of someone in control of his political destiny. He was not even in control of his own limbs. I cannot remember ever seeing anything more strange in a political debate than the weird spasmodic gestures he made in response to the questions candidates were supposed to answer by raising or not raising their hands.
Asked to name the first thing he would try to do after being elected president, Biden said that he would "defeat Donald Trump
...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US...
." Did he mean in battle? (To be fair, idiots in the audience applauded him for this anyway). Nor did he seem to realize that there was any contradiction between his insistence that the Affordable Care Act was more or less the last word in Democratic health-care policy and his support for giving health care to illegal im
Former Oakland mayor Willie Brown's former mistress, now a senatrix from California and 2020 Dem presidential hopeful, indistinguishable from the others...' (D-Calif.) criticism of his nostalgia for the good old days of cutting back-room deals with segregationists and principled opposition to federal busing. Biden looked utterly lost.
This was not just my impression. The post-debate headlines for Biden were uniformly terrible. Already there are reports that he is not cooperating with his handlers during debate preparation, that he is "set in his ways," and that members of his staff are "freaking out," though a spokeswoman for the campaign has, naturally, denied this. But I hope for Biden's sake she's fibbing. It would be a gross dereliction of duty for anyone close to the former vice president not to be panicking after his first debate performance.