Hi, I'm back -- and thanks, Tom and Crank and Libby, for the Biden posts.
I was away from a TV during the debate, but I heard quite a bit of it on radio, cheering and fist-pumping much of the time, and then I was able to watch some clips. I was happy to see that the CBS snap poll of uncommitteds showed Biden winning handily. But then the subsequent polls looked worse -- and now I see that the GOP's top spin message, that Biden smiled too much and chortled too much and did all sorts of rude things, was eagerly picked up by the mainstream press.
So now that's going to be the entire low-information-voter takeaway from the debate: that Biden was horribly disrespectful. Nothing he said will be remembered.
But being disrespectful isn't an unforgivable sin in American politics. All kinds of politicians are disrespectful and still deemed worthy of respect. The problem the right has with Biden, and the mainstream press has with Biden, is that he was disrespectful to the wrong kind of person. He was disrespectful on behalf of the wrong kind of people.
Mainstream journalists and the right agree that it's fine to be disrespectful if your disrespect is aimed at, say, unionized teachers -- that's why the mainstream press shares the right's profound admiration for Chris Christie. Mainstream journalists also loved Rudy Giuliani and his predecessor and doppelganger, Ed Koch, for attacking targets such as homeless people and civil rights leaders; at the end of Giuliani's mayoral term, the press even forgot (or glossed over) the fact that his disrespect could even extend to an innocent man shot to death by cops.
And people will ties to Massachusetts will remember John Silber, the culturally troglodytic president of Boston University who nearly became governor of Massachusetts in 1990. Silber died last month; go read the lengthy, admiring New York Times obituary ("A philosopher by training but a fighter by instinct") -- then ask yourself why none of this made it in:
In one speech he argued that funds for medical care be redirected from the old and infirm to the young, declaring. "When you've had a long life and you're ripe, then it's time to go." Earlier, he suggested none too obliquely that Cambodian emigres were settling in Massachusetts primarily to take advantage of the state's generous welfare programs. And only last month, asked why he had not delivered an address in Boston's predominantly black Roxbury area, Silber shot back: "There's no point in my making a speech on crime control to a bunch of drug addicts."That quote is from a 1990 article in People magazine; the Times obit was far more gentle because, hell, Silber didn't attack anyone important, did he? He had -- oh, how did the Times put it? -- "a tigerish ferocity that delighted admirers and enraged critics."
Biden's error was attacking a Golden Boy of the Beltway -- and attacking him on behalf of ordinary citizens. You can be a milquetoast liberal and the press won't mind -- but act a bit rude on behalf of regular Joes and the press has to find the fainting couch.
That was Biden's grievous offense. If he'd been that rude to the head of a teachers' union, in exactly the same way he was rude to Ryan, the chatterers would be talking about erecting a statue in his honor.
