Biden: Will the world ‘test’ Obama?

last updated 8 January 2015

It may be the “most remarkable thing a vice presidential candidate has ever said about the top of his ticket,” said Jack Kelly in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. During a fundraiser in Seattle last week, Democratic vice presidential hopeful Joseph Biden actually raised the specter of America’s enemies taking advantage of an inexperienced President Obama by triggering a crisis. “Mark my words,” Biden declared, “it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. Watch, we’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.” Did Biden just admit what John McCain has been saying all along: That the 47-year-old first-term senator’s lack of experience is, well, dangerous?

It’s impossible to read Biden’s “stunning admission” any other way, said Pete Hegseth in National Review. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “he is experienced enough to know that projecting weakness on the international stage invites aggression.” He also must realize that Obama’s constant emphasis on “engagement” with sworn enemies is a clear signal that he will be “a more accommodating, and weaker, foe.” So consider yourself warned by the No. 2 Democrat: “Unfriendly regimes and networks—from oil-rich dictators to radical Islamists—will seek to exploit a tepid American foreign policy.” Too bad the press largely ignored Biden’s astonishing comments, said Kirsten Powers in the New York Post. The thinking, apparently, is that the gaffe-prone Biden often says silly things, so who cares? “Needless to say, if Sarah Palin said this about a McCain administration, the media world would be exploding.”

Perhaps so, said the Roanoke, Va., Times in an editorial, but the truth is that whoever wins on Nov. 4 will be “tested.” We live in extremely dangerous times, with two wars, a global terrorism threat, a resurgent Russia, and Iran and North Korea moving to become nuclear powers. “Voters should be asking themselves which candidate is demonstrating the calm leadership they would want the president to display during a crisis.” The campaign has answered that question, as Obama has stayed cool and focused while McCain has impulsively bounced from message to message and tactic to tactic. While Republicans were quick to seize on the first part of Biden’s remark, said Matthew Lee in the Associated Press, they conveniently ignored how he completed it: “They’re going to find out,” Biden said, “this guy’s got steel in his spine.”