Biden’s Print Gaffes Almost As Fun As His Verbal Ones

By Anthony Bialy

First, let’s acknowledge the obvious milestone: Joe Biden is the first person to ever submit a New York Times column written in crayon. Aw, I’m just teasing our Senate’s tiebreaker, whose miscues and odd takes on life make him as loveable as a sitcom neighbor. While he may come across as less agreeable than Ned Flanders, lack the quirkiness of Lenny and/or Squiggy, and hover below an Urkel-esque level of endearment, we enjoy his antics at least as much as Skippy’s on Family Ties.

Still, his boasts that the stimulus has provoked happiness and progress could use some punching up. Biden’s recent NYT entry (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/opinion/26biden.html) reads like the equivalent of a GM salesman’s pitch regarding the company’s undesirable vehicles: he’s stuck peddling something nobody wants to buy.

In that regard, Biden is almost pitiable. Of course, quickly remembering that he believes his own preposterous explanations makes it easy to justify shredding his nonsense. Consider this remarkable claim from his first paragraph:

“We still have a long way to go, but clearly we are closer to recovery today than we were in January. The Recovery Act has been critical to that progress.”

It’s always good to find common ground with political foes, and certainly all conservatives can agree that there is “a long way to go.” Yes, everything after the comma he typed is factual nonsense. But let’s focus on what we share! He next tries to classify the waste:

“The single largest part of the Recovery Act — more than one-third of it — is tax cuts: 95 percent of working Americans have seen their taxes go down as a result of the act.”

Yep, tax cuts are great, except when they’re temporary, directed toward many who pay little to no taxes to begin with, and are not quite paired with spending cuts. Other than that, Biden and his boss are free-market Reaganites who see government as the enemy of, not the cause of, progress.

“The second-largest part — just under a third — is direct relief to state governments and individuals.”

Well, no. True “direct relief” would be in the form of the aforementioned genuine tax cuts. But it would be trickier to fund, say, cash for clunkers without soaking the rich. Plus, we have extraordinarily unnecessary federal spending to finance:

“As for the final third, the act is financing the largest investment in roads since the creation of the Interstate highway system; construction projects at military bases, ports, bridges and tunnels; long overdue Superfund cleanups; the creation of clean energy jobs of the future; improvements in badly outdated rural water systems; upgrades to overtaxed mass transit and rail systems; and much more.”

What a third! To quarrel with each point: paving roads ahead of schedule won’t have a noticeable affect on driving, much less the economy. This administration shouldn’t dare claim to be pro-military spending, and the other projects should be funded by local governments or user tolls. Superfund messes should be cleaned up by whoever made the messes.

Meanwhile, we’ll create our own “clean energy jobs” once “clean energy” becomes practical and/or affordable; did Biden ever think that there’s a reason there aren’t already many such employment opportunities? Pipes and rail car upgrades are the responsibilities of those who use the pipes and ride the trains, respectively. And I don’t even want to know what “much more” could mean. Apparently, it might be anything:

“But the way I see it, our balanced approach recognizes that there is no silver bullet, no single thing, that can address the many and complex needs of America’s vast economy.”

Well, one single two-headed thing could help: we’d be in far better shape if the government collected and spent remarkably less money. Of course, that dreamy scenario won’t occur until 2013 at the earliest. The current executive doesn’t trust us to take care of the economy’s details, a notion the backup guy confirmed in his column.

Blame Biden’s limited background. As with his superior, the vice president is a lawyer with zero entrepreneurial experience. His adult life has seen him go from practicing law to the Senate to his current job. Um, that’s it. His story wouldn’t precisely make for a good movie; in fact, there may not be enough material to create a trailer.

It’s true that an individual doesn’t need to have managed a business to be pro-business. For example, some of us have enough trouble running our lives to ever consider attempting the same with a company. But many non-MBAs still manage to learn that private commercial interests alone should, and do, fuel any true economic activity.

Limited interaction with humans outside of his law offices or the Capitol has created Biden’s myopic take on financial problem-solving. It’s as if our vice president was raised by wolves: his entire perspective has been warped by his environs. Teaching him table manners will take forever, as he’s still biting guests and knocking over garbage cans.

That’s why Biden misses the broader point. This isn’t a matter of properly using stimulus money: that’s an impossibility, as the government is by default the wrong entity to attempt to alleviate our monetary woes. Unfortunately, his essay flaunted a chronic desire to treat the treasury like a stolen credit card. It’s easy to rag on Obama’s chief minion for his peculiar utterances. But it’s far more unsettling to realize that Biden thinks he knows how to spend your money better than you do.

Still, his turn as columnist did help the administration in one way. Obama would obviously prefer that Biden keeps writing editorials, as each moment the Delaware man spends clicking away at a keyboard is one where he’s not speaking in public. The president may take inspiration from another television comedy if he truly wants to keep his second in command occupied and out of the public’s view: Obama could open a Microsoft Word document, put a phony web address at the top, and tell his underling to start blogging, just like Ryan did for Creed on The Office (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9dqckcQQZw).

It will be a shame if we don’t have access to the Veep’s future pieces, as his words are infinitely amusing once one learns to never take them seriously. Can’t The New York Times give him a regular slot? The resulting entertainingly baseless articles would provide many of us with the only reason to ever consider exchanging six freaking bucks for the Sunday edition. While it may lead to less room for columns from Paul Krugman or Maureen Dowd, they’d certainly understand. After all, everyone needs to sacrifice if we’re ever going to get closer to recovery.