Here are his votes on trade issues. They could be better, noting that this is unlikely to be his major function. Cato gives him 42 percent on trade issues, noting that he once wanted to ban all toy imports from China. Here is Biden on budget issues; more conservative than I would have thought. Here is Biden on internet issues. David Brooks offered an interesting personal portrait of the man:
Honesty. Biden’s most notorious feature
is his mouth. But in his youth, he had a stutter. As a freshman in high
school he was exempted from public speaking because of his disability,
and was ridiculed by teachers and peers. His nickname was Dash, because
of his inability to finish a sentence.He developed an odd smile
as a way to relax his facial muscles (it still shows up while he’s
speaking today) and he’s spent his adulthood making up for any comments
that may have gone unmade during his youth.Today, Biden’s
conversational style is tiresome to some, but it has one outstanding
feature. He is direct. No matter who you are, he tells you exactly what
he thinks, before he tells it to you a second, third and fourth time.
Maybe he would have done well in academia.
Biden — the perfect foil for Palin!
A record of 42% says very little, because Cato does take into account his voting record on international IP (things like TRIPS…). Intellectual property rights, after all, are barriers to trade, maybe even more important than tariffs. If you take Biden’s views about IP into account his voting record may well be minus 42%.
“Maybe he would have done well in academia…”
Nah… over at Volokh, they’re already savaging his academic record…
We need all our legislators to talk more and do less.
New Republic profile of Biden.
Biden on the Patriot Act: “I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up was my bill.”
He authored the RAVE Act, and has in general been one of the most committed drug warriors in the Democratic Party.
He’s very pro-Amtrak.
There’s the plagiarism thing, and then “I think I have a higher IQ than you,” and the claiming that he finished in the top half of his law class, etc. when he really finished 75th out of 85 or so.
Ugh, has anyone seen his stance on gun control?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9aIb-IplqY
I realize this was to be an economics topic, but I don’t understand the comment that Biden’s Iraq policy is “naive.” Quite the reverse. It seems to me that, like his friend Richard Lugar and the rest of the foreign policy establishment (except for the neocons,) Biden has been pretty much right on the money.
The surge reduced violence, sure, but the stated goal of political reconciliation isn’t happening, which was Petraeus’ fear too. It would seem that some of the congressional Democrats foresaw this likelihood in the beginning of 2007, when they opposed the surge as more or less a diversion.
To be sure, some lives were saved by the division of neighborhoods and the aid to the Sunni Awakenings. That’s to the good.
But at this time, all we have in return for it is that the fundamentalist Shi’ites are curiously quiescent, the plans for regional elections are on hold, and the Baghdad government wants to arrest leaders of the Sunni Awakenings — pushing some of them perhaps to move toward al Qaeda.
So anybody who thinks the surge “worked” ought to explain what the U.S. must do next, to prevent Iraq from having a freely-elected, anti-Western Shi’ite government. Unfortunately, this is the same outcome that has been most probable all along.
And as I understand him, this has been Biden’s view all along (as well as that of most foreign policy experts.) He wasn’t the first person to mention the break-up of Iraq to protect the other tribes, and we may yet see it happen.
Maybe he would have done well in academia.are you talking about Dan Quayle ?
“the representatives of all the groups in Iraq, including the minority ones, strongly oppose the idea” Ask yourself why — and if it’s the same reason in every case. That Reuters article you linked quotes a Sunni (no surprise there, the minority doesn’t want to get shut out with nothing,) a secular Shi’ite connected to Allawi, and a Kurd who in fact is NOT opposed to autonomous regions, just to forming them on a sectarian as opposed to geographic basis. (No surprise there either.) That is not agreement “across the spectrum.”
The same treatment should be applied to the phrase “everyone agrees that political reconciliation is necessary.” Perhaps this should be rewritten “everyone agrees this is what is reported in the U.S. media.” No one is going to declare open war if it means a surer loss of lands that you might otherwise control at the end — and if it is easier to smile while plunging the knife.
Just yesterday the N.Y. times reported “Fear Keeps Iraqis Out of Their Baghdad Homes.” Only 7,000 out of over 150,000 are willing to take the chance of return. And that is in a city where the U.S. is keeping the peace. The U.S. will have to stay there for several generations to make this work. And so get used and misused by one side or the other in that long process.
About the only thing going for peace are Shi’ite seculars somehow without hatred after their relatives’ being smashed by the Sunnis for decades under Saddam — on top of an age-old sectarian hatred. (Well, there must be one or two Iraqi peaceniks out there somewhere!) And the other thing going for peace is Sistani — but he is old, and what’s coming after is not necessarily a pro-Western outlook. Then the next question is: can those seculars dominate in free elections if all the fundamentalist Shi’ites participate? An affirmative answer appears to be in doubt.
For this U.S. presidential election, the question had been whether the voters would continue their wishful thinking and affirm McCain’s pledge to stay there for a hundred years. I write “had been,” because the Administration is close to a withdrawal deal, thereby saving McCain from his foolish gung-ho-ism — although that deal comes in support of the Democrats’ (and Biden’s) contention that pulling-out may force some Iraqis to think a little harder about peace. But even that contention is really just a guess. History may decide that the surge was a diversion from the inevitable.
Biden is a career politician, whose sons have profited mightily from their surname.
Sounds pretty conventional to me.
The fact that he stuttered as youth means he’ll tolerant
Obama’s constant “uhh”, “uhh”, “uhh”.
Other than that, with the voting record, arrogance,
lack of real life work experience,
he’s a perfect for for Obama.
The only question is who’ll pay for all of the carbon offsets to mitigate the amount
of bovine excrement this guys vomit up?
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Is it realistic?
Everything is decided by the market instead of any single human being’s personal feeling.
But opportunity and efforts are same important on the way to yr goal.
Like the aion gold performance in the market.
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