Sunday Funnies

Biden

David Brooks, in a rare cogent moment:

Working-Class Roots. Biden is a lunch-bucket Democrat. His father was rich when he was young — played polo, cavorted on yachts, drove luxury cars. But through a series of bad personal and business decisions, he was broke by the time Joe Jr. came along. They lived with their in-laws in Scranton, Pa., then moved to a dingy working-class area in Wilmington, Del. At one point, the elder Biden cleaned boilers during the week and sold pennants and knickknacks at a farmer’s market on the weekends.

His son was raised with a fierce working-class pride — no one is better than anyone else. Once, when Joe Sr. was working for a car dealership, the owner threw a Christmas party for the staff. Just as the dancing was to begin, the owner scattered silver dollars on the floor and watched from above as the mechanics and salesmen scrambled about for them. Joe Sr. quit that job on the spot.

I once worked for somebody like that myself.

Honesty. Biden’s most notorious feature is his mouth. But in his youth, he had a stutter. As a freshman in high school he was exempted from public speaking because of his disability, and was ridiculed by teachers and peers. His nickname was Dash, because of his inability to finish a sentence.

He developed an odd smile as a way to relax his facial muscles (it still shows up while he’s speaking today) and he’s spent his adulthood making up for any comments that may have gone unmade during his youth.

Today, Biden’s conversational style is tiresome to some, but it has one outstanding feature. He is direct. No matter who you are, he tells you exactly what he thinks, before he tells it to you a second, third and fourth time.

Presidents need someone who will be relentlessly direct. Obama, who attracts worshippers, not just staff members, needs that more than most.

While the comparisons to W and Cheney in 2000 are striking, this is one of the most fundamental differences.

Loyalty. Just after Biden was elected to the senate in 1972, his wife, Neilia, and daughter Naomi were killed in a car crash. His career has also been marked by lesser crises. His first presidential run ended in a plagiarism scandal. He nearly died of a brain aneurism.

New administrations are dominated by the young and the arrogant, and benefit from the presence of those who have been through the worst and who have a tinge of perspective. Moreover, there are moments when a president has to go into the cabinet room and announce a decision that nearly everyone else on his team disagrees with. In those moments, he needs a vice president who will provide absolute support. That sort of loyalty comes easiest to people who have been down themselves, and who had to rely on others in their own moments of need.

Experience. When Obama talks about postpartisanship, he talks about a grass-roots movement that will arise and sweep away the old ways of Washington. When John McCain talks about it, he describes a meeting of wise old heads who get together to craft compromises. Obama’s vision is more romantic, but McCain’s is more realistic.

When Biden was a young senator, he was mentored by Hubert Humphrey, Mike Mansfield and the like. He was schooled in senatorial procedure in the days when the Senate was less gridlocked. If Obama hopes to pass energy and health care legislation, he’s going to need someone with that kind of legislative knowledge who can bring the battered old senators together, as in days of yore.

As with Kos, I could have been much happier with a better progressive, but I have forgiven Joe for his bad vote on the bankruptcy bill, and believe this was the best of the remaining options Obama had winnowed.

This settling for the third-best, a-little-too-conservative choice is an early pattern of reaction for me to the coming Obama presidency. I won't be thrilled if the trend continues, I likely won't even be satisfied often, but compared to the blight of the first eight years of the century so far ... it's an improvement.

"They go Rezko, we go Keating"

Brian Rogers, McCain spokesman:

"Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses?"

Let's git it on, you little bitch.

"They go Rezko, we go Keating," said a Democratic strategist, speaking on the condition of anonymity to divulge potential campaign strategy. "If they want to escalate, bring it on."

This is how you win a mothereffin' election in the RoveWorld.

The Keating Five is an old story, so many reporters have shied away from saying much about it because it isn't new -- there aren't a whole lot of new developments in the story. But with McCain talking about allegedly shady relationships, the opportunity is there to go back over McCain's ties to Keating -- whose nefarious activities, which were at least in part aided by his relationship with McCain, ended up costing the American taxpayer $3.4 billion (a whole lot more than the $14 million Rezko was alleged to have received).

Just how close was McCain to Keating? Take a look at this rundown I posted back in January:

Though McCain might try to downplay his involvement, his campaigns received $124,000 from Keating and his associates during the 1980s (AP, 3/2/91), and McCain was described as being personally closer to Keating than any of the other members of the Keating Five (Roll Call, 1/20/92). What's more, McCain accepted more than $15,000 in free trips from Keating, including vacations to Keating's resort in the Bahamas -- trips that McCain failed to disclose at the time (New York Times, 2/28/91; San Francisco Chronicle, 12/3/90).

In the end, the crash of Keating's savings and loan -- which had been shielded by some of his best friends in the United States Senate -- cost billions to the American taxpayer, as mentioned above, and all told the federal government ended up on the hook for close to $125 billion in the fallout of the crisis that befell the underregulated industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Does McCain really want to have to talk about all of this? About the Bahaman vacations he took paid for by Keating? Probably not. But he may soon have to as a result of the shortsightedness of his campaign advisors.

Like Brian Rogers.

Attacks will keep working for the Republicans until we beat them at their game. That, and only that, will force them to think up a new game in 2012. In a post-Rove environment.

John McMansions

It's easy now to see how the senior senator from Arizona got confused on his domiciles. He only owns what his wife owns, after all. But here's an inventory:

-- In California, McGrumpy owns three condominium properties. Two are in Coronado, both are on the beach, offering breathtaking views of the ocean, particularly at sunset, and are each valued in excess of $2 million (one at 2.1, one at 2.7). The other is in La Jolla, the tony suburb of San Diego, and is worth a paltry $1.1 mil.

-- In Arizona, McLame has three residences: a $4.67 million condo in the prestigious Camelback, a smaller unit in the Phoenix Biltmore, apparently lived in by one of his daughters and worth just $700,000; and the stunning Sedona compound, which only counts as one home but actually has five houses on the property. It was featured in the July 2005 edition of Architectural Digest and comes in at a fabulously reasonable $1.65 million.

-- And in Arlington, VA, a Crystal City condo valued at $847,000 for when he is performing his duties as United States Senator. Which hasn't been often this year.

McSenile also has a $10 million Cessna Citation to travel around to his various houses in.

Very confusing. I understand now.

Update: Why do the McCains own two condos in Coronado, you may be asking? Because their children crowded them out of the first one. And Mrs. McCain purchased the second condo about the same time her husband was commiserating with Americans who "were working at second jobs" and "skipping a vacation" in order to make their own mortgage payments.

Terribly, terribly confusing.

It's seven, John. Worth thirteen million bucks.

At least we know now he wasn't lying or even flip-flopping when he said he didn't understand economics. Oh well, Phil Gramm has rejoined the campaign; it can be his job to remind him. A couple of times a week:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

"I think — I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's condominiums where — I'll have them get to you."

Can't remember how many houses he owns, can't tell a Sunni from a Shia, thinks Pakistan shares a border with Iraq, has both supported and opposed offshore drilling, the Bush tax cuts ...

... and Obama is losing ground to this guy?