Vice President Joe Biden claims he’s still considering a presidential bid. All I can say is: Run, Joe, run. There are reasons why Joe should jump in; they may not be good reasons, but at least they’re better than Hillary’s.
1. Biden would liven up the whole election
Presidential campaigns are long and tedious affairs—and that will be doubly true with Hillary Clinton in the race. So some occasional comedic relief to lighten the tension, which usually comes in the form of a gaffe, does everyone a little good. That’s where Joe Biden excels; he is one gaffe-prone politician.
Give the man a microphone and you never know what he’s going to say next—a tendency that gives his minders heartburn but the rest of the country great amusement.
Sometimes his outbursts meet Washington’s formal definition of a gaffe—i.e., when someone accidentally tells the truth. As when Biden, speaking at Harvard last October, claimed that many of our middle eastern allies—Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates—gave a lot of financial and military support to what turned out to be the Islamic State.
As the New York Times pointed out, Biden told the truth and then had to apologize to Turkey and the UAE for being honest.
At other times it’s just Joe bloviating, making stuff up out of whole cloth. As when he told Katie Couric during the 2008 campaign, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’” Except that the stock market crash was in 1929, while FDR didn’t take office until 1933. Oh, and TV was only experimental.
2. Biden knows how to make a deal
When then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell couldn’t get any traction with the White House on a budget agreement, he’d call his former Senate colleague, Biden, and say, “I need a dance partner.” Biden stepped in the middle of things and get a bipartisan agreement.
3. Biden would probably do less serious damage to the economy
Biden may be liberal, but he can support good economic policy. For example, as a senator Biden voted for Ronald Reagan’s Tax Reform Act of 1986, which lowered the top marginal tax rate from 50 percent to 28 percent. There would still be a lot of squabbling and gridlock, but at least he can work with Republicans, and he’s smart enough to know when the voters are sending Washington a message.
4. He’d likely be a one-termer
Reagan was the oldest president ever elected to office, and he was nearly 70. Biden will turn 74 the month of the 2016 election—two years older than John McCain would have been in 2008, had he won. That age concern pushed McCain to say he would only serve one term. Biden might address age concerns by making the same pledge.
If by some chance he were to win, that would mean an open election in four years instead of eight—and Hillary wouldn’t have to wait so long to try again.
5. He’s less corrupt
In her book “Culture of Corruption,” Michelle Malkin did a great job of highlighting the frauds, scam artists and tax cheats in the Obama administration—or who almost got there. And she focused the sweet deal Biden got for selling his house to a company executive.
On the other hand, the list of the Clintons’ questionable shenanigans, shady deals and rumors that won’t die is long and getting longer. If Hillary gets into the White House, grab on for four, and possibly eight, years of non-stop embarrassing stories.
6. No one thinks Biden can win
There’s likely to be a fairly strong anyone-but-Clinton contingent among Democrats—and the country, for that matter. That’s part of the reason behind the draft Elizabeth Warren effort, even as Warren keeps saying she won’t run. But the Democratic presidential bench is really thin, no doubt due in part to the Clintons’ efforts to suppress any challengers.
I don’t know anyone who thinks Biden can win the Democratic nomination or the presidential election—except, perhaps, for Joe. But then no one thought an undistinguished freshman senator from Illinois with nothing to go on but chutzpah could beat the well-funded Clinton machine in 2008.
So here’s hoping Joe jumps in. The campaign would be more fun if he’s got a microphone and, in the very unlikely chance that he would win the Democratic nomination, the country would be spared another round of the Clintons.