Tell them how you really feel:
I don’t mind stupid people. It’s stupid people who think they’re smart that aggravate me — which goes a long way toward explaining my profound and enduring antipathy to Vice President Joe Biden, the most vapid gasbag ever to hold the office.
Back when I was young and frisky and counsel to a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I routinely had to sit just a few feet behind and over from that insufferable blowhard. His chairmanship of Senate Judiciary was notable for two, and only two, things: his world-class logorrhea, and his serial character assassination of honorable men and women whose nominations he torpedoed for the crime of holding conservative convictions and taking the Constitution seriously. For someone with an intellect as shallow as Biden’s (76th out of 85 in his class at a law school that U.S. News ranks as 96th out of 200) — and who was a mendacious plagiarist to boot (see, e.g., Why Biden’s plagiarism shouldn’t be forgotten) — to question the qualifications and character of jurists like Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas required a veritable Everest of chutzpah.
In 2008, the mainstream media widely regarded Biden as adding “gravitas” to the Democratic ticket. Whether that says more about the shallowness of Barack Obama or the shallowness of his acolytes in the press is hard to say. Either way, I’m anticipating tonight’s debate with unseemly eagerness, indeed relish. Unlike Biden, Paul Ryan is a gentleman, so Slow Joe won’t get a taste of his own medicine. But next to the earnest, informed, disciplined, and precise Ryan, Biden can’t possibly go 90 minutes without exposing himself as a five-star buffoon.
I’ve got the popcorn popper ready.
[Update a while later]
“Joe just needs to be Joe.”
No worries, he’s not capable of being anyone smarter.
First thing that went through my head when I heard Romney picked Ryan… “When’s the VP debate!”
While part of me wants Ryan to club Biden like a baby seal, I don’t want there to be a sympathy backlash. I’ve seen smarter doorknobs than Biden. He’s a moron and a sleaze.
It’s “ACTIVE/STUPID” that’s the worst position on a energy/smarts chart.
The saddest fact of all is that he does add “gravitas” to Obama/Biden.
The only problem with this is that Biden is SO dumb that the bar has been set impossibly low. If he avoids disintegrating completely, or drooling on himself (a bit more challenging, but still…), he will exceed expectations, and the press will plausibly declare that he has ‘won’.
Ryan, on the other hand, is going to be held to a much higher standard, precisely because he is facing such a complete idiot. Anything less than Godzilla’s stomping of Bambi will be perceived to be a defeat, or at the very least ‘underperforming’….
Well, that’s how you get Senators like Boxer, Obama and Franken.
You forgot Patty Murray, Biden’s successor as ‘dumbest person in the Senate’ (which considering the competition, is something of an achievement…)
Actually, you aren’t being entirely fair. While loathesome and dishonest, Franken is not all that dumb. I have met him (and for that matter Boxer), and trust me, Franken and Boxer are similar only in that they are both based upon carbon.
I’m still waiting for the cage match between Franken and O’Reilly.
I am still amazed that he still has a political career after the plagiarism incident. But he’s a Democrat so I probably shouldn’t be.
Compared to Robert Byrd’s KKK membership and Ted Kennedy’s womanizing (along with Chris Dodd’s Waitress Sandwich) and woman killing, plagiarism is small potatos.