The economics of Joseph Biden

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.