Biden’s world of gaffes

last updated 8 January 2015

Joe Biden has been generating some “bad national headlines,” said Chris Cillizza in The Washington Post. He called one of running mate Barack Obama’s TV ads “terrible” and misstated the campaign’s positions on the AIG bailout and coal mining, among other gaffes. Maybe Biden's foreign policy experience doesn't outweigh his famous “shoot-from-the-hip” speaking style, after all.

The thing about Biden, said Christopher Beam in Slate, is that his frequent verbal blunders have made him virtually “gaffe-proof.” He has survived racially insensitive and factually incorrect gaffes that would ruin another politician’s career. His "gaffe immunity" won't protect him when he debates Sarah Palin, but until then he can “gaffe away.”

Well, Biden’s anti-coal gaffe, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial, when Obama is in favor of “clean coal” plants, could cost his campaign in crucial swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. A gaffe is “when a politician accidentally tells the truth,” and Biden’s comment reveals the “politically unutterable truth” about liberal energy policy.