[Mb-civic] Loose Lips Sink . . . - Richard Cohen - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Loose Lips Sink . . .
Biden's Leadership Is Lost in All His Talk

By Richard Cohen
Thursday, January 12, 2006; A21

The only thing standing between Joe Biden and the presidency is his 
mouth. That, though, is no small matter. It is a Himalayan barrier, a 
Sahara of a handicap, a summer's day in Death Valley, a winter's night 
at the pole (either one) -- an endless list of metaphors intended to 
show you both the immensity of the problem and to illustrate it with the 
op-ed version of excess. This, alas, is Joe Biden.

The reviews for Biden's first crack at Samuel Alito, the humorless 
Supreme Court nominee, were murderous. The New York Times had Biden out 
on Page One -- normally a position to kill for -- only this time it was 
not a paean to his considerable merits, but an account of how it took 
him nearly three minutes of throat-clearing to ask his first question 
and then took the rest of his allocated 30 minutes just to get in four 
more. He concluded with about half a minute still left to him -- 
something of a personal best that even he had to acknowledge.

"I want to note that for maybe the first time in history, Biden is 40 
seconds under his time," he told Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen 
Specter, no clipped speaker himself.

The Post had a similar account of Biden running off at the mouth. In 
that piece, Dana Milbank wrote that during Biden's round of questioning, 
he "spoke about his own Irish American roots, his 'Grandfather 
Finnegan,' his son's application to Princeton (he attended the 
University of Pennsylvania instead, Biden said), a speech the senator 
gave on the Princeton campus, the fact that Biden is 'not a Princeton 
fan,' and his views on the eyeglasses of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)."

The tragedy is that Biden, who is running for president, is a much 
better man and senator than these accounts would suggest. But his 
tendency, his compulsion, his manic-obsessive running of the mouth has 
become the functional equivalent of womanizing or some other character 
weakness that disqualifies a man for the presidency. It is his version 
of corruption, of alcoholism, of a fierce temper or vile views -- all 
the sorts of things that have crippled candidates in the past. It is, 
though, an innocent thing, as good-humored as the man and of no real 
policy consequence. It will merely stunt him politically.

'Tis a pity. Biden occupies the sensible center of the Democratic Party. 
He supported Bill Clinton's crime bill (more cops, fewer assault rifles) 
which helped the Democrats fight the talk-show calumny that they were 
pro-crime and anti-cop. In his maturity, he has emerged, along with some 
appropriate gray hair, as one of his party's most important -- and 
knowledgeable -- voices on foreign policy. Even on Iraq, an area where 
too many Democrats forgot that there was any reason for war, Biden took 
a decidedly centrist -- and defensible -- position. He voted to 
authorize the president to go to war but has since characterized that 
vote as "a mistake."

"It was a mistake to assume the president would use the authority we 
gave him properly," Biden said in November on "Meet the Press" -- adding 
that if he were allotted a do-over, he'd vote no. Since this 
approximately reflects my own position, I am inclined to appreciate its 
wisdom. But even before that vote, Biden was urging President Bush to 
seek international support for the Iraq effort, not to move 
precipitously, and to have a postwar plan. Bush, listening to 
you-know-who, did what the voices told him.

The seniority that makes Biden so knowledgeable on foreign policy -- a 
conversation with him is always instructive -- is also what cripples. He 
has been in the Senate since 1973 and suffers, as nearly all senators do 
sooner or later, from the conviction that he and his colleagues are the 
center of the world. After all, no one -- with the possible exception of 
family members -- ever tells a senator to shut up. They are surrounded 
by fawning staff and generally treated as minor deities. They lose 
perspective, which is why, now that you've asked, they talk and talk at 
these hearings. They are convinced the world is watching. Actually, it's 
only a half a dozen shut-ins on C-SPAN -- and, of course, the nearly 
catatonic press corps. Everyone else is playing computer solitaire.

Biden ran for president once before -- and then, too, his mouth went off 
on its own. (In 1988, his stump speech was perilously similar to the one 
used by Neil Kinnock, Britain's Labor Party leader.) This time seems no 
different, except the loss is greater. Foreign policy, Biden's 
specialty, is the number one issue. He has much to say -- and then too 
much to add. He is an anatomical disaster. His Achilles' heel is his mouth.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/11/AR2006011102041.html?nav=hcmodule
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