Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Joe Biden has long been a gaffe machine when delivering a speech, answering questions from the press or interacting extemporaneously with the public during campaign events. Consider for example when he responded to a question from a supposed supporter at a campaign event, “You’re a lying, dog-faced, pony soldier.”
When I first saw that quote, I parsed it because it made no sense. I know what lying is, the term dog-face or dog-faces was once used to refer to infantry soldiers and pony soldiers, as any western movie fan knows, refers to cavalry troopers. It was passed off as, “That’s Joe being Joe” by everyone who heard it.
Joe also once explained to Sarah Palin during a vice-presidential debate that Franklin Roosevelt used television to bolster Americans during the Great Depression and after Pearl Harbor.
There is, however, a darker side to some of Joe’s remarks and comebacks that can give one pause after a moment of thought. When Senator Biden ran for president in 1988, he was asked by a reporter, “Where did you go to law school and where did you come out in your class?” Biden responded by saying that he probably had a higher IQ than the reporter, that he had been in the top half of his class and that he had, indeed, two majors from his college. All of this was easily checked by reporters and, alas for Biden, in those days, reporters did check. The result was several TV news programs that documented Biden’s claims and the fact that they were all false.
The straw that broke the camel’s back and caused Senator Biden to drop out of the race was the discovery that he had plagiarized a speech first delivered by British politician Neil Kinnock. When this became public knowledge, Biden folded his campaign.
As president, Biden has continued his habit of off-the-cuff remarks while publicly speaking and this has caused the White House staff to walk back or clarify some of his remarks. Last month, Biden told members of the 82nd Airborne Division in Poland that they could expect to be in Ukraine in the future. He further stated that “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power” when talking about Vladimir Putin.
These are past being gaffes. Biden has implied that he will send troops into a combat zone and that regime change in Russia is the stayed policy of the United States.
Note to Joe: “You’re not Lunch Bucket Joe anymore, you’re Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., president of the United States. Act like it.”
Rube Render is a former Clovis city commissioner and former chair of the Curry County Republican Party. Contact him:
