Joseph Epstein: The Comic Stylings of Joe Biden
The vice president is a three-letter word called fun. Or is it four?
By JOSEPH EPSTEIN
With Democrats wondering whether President Obama should keep Joe Biden as his running mate, and some of them even suggesting Hillary Clinton as his replacement, I'm already beginning to miss the vice president. Mr. Biden, after all, supplies comic relief, a thing always in great need and inevitably in short supply in American politics. He is the only politician in recent years whose every utterance isn't predictable. Joe Biden himself must often be astonished at what comes out of his mouth.The hair-plugs, the shysterish suits, the wiseguy demeanor, the low-grade lawyerly confidence of utterance, it's a grand show the vice president puts on. The first clue we had of Mr. Biden's quality was the long, lost Anita Hill weekend, back in 1991 during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he displayed his talent for asking all the wrong, which is to say so many of the embarrassing, questions. It was the way he asked them—with that smirky certainty of his own unproved astuteness—that is signature Joe Biden.
Associated Press
