Former Vice President Joe Biden, while campaigning in New Hampshire for the Democratic Party nomination late last week, attempted to reassure his supporters during a campaign stop by saying, “I want to be clear, I’m not going nuts.”
Biden’s reassurance comes after a string of gaffes that have led many to question whether the 76-year-old presidential candidate has the mental dexterity for the rigors of the Oval Office. Speaking to supporters at Loon Lake in New Hampshire, Biden admitted that he could not remember exactly where on the campus of Dartmouth College he had spoken only a few hours earlier. “I’m not sure whether it was the medical school or where the hell I spoke. But it was on the campus.”
Biden has made so many gaffes during his present campaign — after years of making statements that have raised eyebrows — that his brain surgeon has felt compelled to reassure the public that Biden is “as sharp as he was 31 years ago.” It was 31 years earlier, in 1988, that Biden experienced two brain aneurysms.
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In just the past few days, Biden was remarking how nice it was to be in Vermont, but the only trouble was that he was in New Hampshire. He also recently said at the Asian and Latino Coalition in Iowa, “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” It is probable that he meant that minority kids rather than “poor kids” (like blacks, Asians, and Hispanics), but with Biden, that is only a guess.
In response to concerns that the Russian government might try to interfere with the 2020 election, as they supposedly did in 2016, Biden said that the 2016 interference would not have happened on his and “Barack’s watch.” Of course, Obama and Biden were the ones in office during the 2016 campaign and it was their watch.
During his long career in politics, Biden has had multiple comments that have drawn laughter, and it would be difficult to relate them all. But among the more famous was his September 2008 explanation to Katie Couric during the financial meltdown about how President Franklin Roosevelt supposedly handled the 1929 stock market crash: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’” Of course, Roosevelt was not president until 1933, and the only TV sets at the time were experimental, so he would have only been speaking to a handful of people.
The 2008 campaign also provided a gaffe when Biden said at a campaign stop in Missouri, “Stand up, Chuck, let ’em see ya.” The problem was that State Senator Chuck Graham could not “stand up,” because he was in a wheelchair. Biden also called his presidential running mate of the 2008 campaign, “Barack America.”
Speaking of Obama, early in the 2008 race when Biden was also competing for the nomination, he said, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean that’s storybook, man.” Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, African-Americans who had run for president before, took offense, with Sharpton protesting that he was clean himself because he took a bath every day.
In the last days of the 2008 race, Biden attacked the economic proposals of then-Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain of Arizona by saying the number one problem facing the middle class was “a three-letter word: J-O-B-S, jobs.”
After settling in as vice president, in 2010, Biden introduced the prime minister of Ireland, Brian Cowen, by saying, “His mom lived in Long Island for ten years or so. God rest her soul.” Then, as he started to continue, he realized that Cowen’s mother was still living: “Wait — your mom’s still — your mom’s still alive. Your dad passed.”
When Obama and Biden ran for reelection in 2012, Biden clumsily played the race card in a bid for votes, speaking to a predominantly African-American audience in Virginia. “Look at what they [the Republicans] value, and look at their budget. And look what they’re proposing. [Romney] said in the first 100 days, he’s going to let the big banks write their own rules — unchain Wall Street. They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”
Apparently, Biden plays close attention to the ethnicity of those with whom he comes into contact, as evidenced by his June 2006 comments, captured on C-SPAN: “You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent … I’m not joking.”
Biden might not be joking, but he certainly is good for a few laughs on a regular basis. Of course, were he to actually win the presidency next year, it might not be very funny for long.
Photo of Joe Biden: Michael Stokes via Wikimedia
Steve Byas is a college history instructor in history and government in Oklahoma, and is the author of the book History’s Greatest Libels. He can be contacted at [email protected]
