In 1987 Joe Biden was asked a question by an intuitive reporter who wondered where the Senator went to law school, Biden snidely remarked “I think I have a much higher IQ than you do.” While his ego certainly is comparable to Barack Obama’s, Michelle Obama feels his intellect is where is greatness lies.

Obama then moved on to politics, where she first brought up her husband’s vice-presidential choice. “I think it was a really good pick—Senator Joe Biden,” she said, and later added, “People say they have amazing chemistry, and it’s true.”

Obama continued with talk about Biden when she said, “What you learn about Barack from his choice is that he’s not afraid of smart people.” The crowd softly chuckled.

Softly chuckled indeed. Biden may have the most foreign policy experience amongst Obama VP choices, that does not in and of itself make him best qualified. Any football fan from the early 90’s will tell you the Buffalo Bills Super Bowl “experience” did not make them the best team . On the contrary, it made the Bills the biggest laughing stock of that decade (my apologies to Bills fans, I think Lynch is one of the premier backs in the league right now). Being in the big game so often does not make you the best team, unless you know how to win.

Lori Byrd has a snapshot of Biden’s recent foreign policy experience, and once again with my apologies to Buffalo Bills fans, the Senator seems to have something in common with them.

September 2007: Just before Gen. David Petraeus was scheduled to report to Congress, Joe Biden said President Bush’s war strategy is failing and that Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, is “dead flat wrong” for warning against major changes. “The reality is that although there’s been some mild security progress, there is in fact no security in Baghdad or Anbar province where I was dealing with the most serious problem, sectarian violence.” Biden claimed that Bush’s purpose for the surge was to buy time long enough to push the burden of the war onto the next president. Biden said, “I will insist on a firm beginning to withdraw the troops and I will insist on a target date to get American combat forces out.”

In case you haven’t been keeping track, Iraq currently has security control over 11 of their 18 provinces including Anbar.

In an interview with the late Tim Russert in 2007, Biden was asked about his previous statement:

MR. RUSSERT: This war must end now. In, in ‘05, this is what Joe Biden was saying: “We can call it quits and withdraw from Iraq. I think that would be a gigantic mistake. Or we can set a deadline for pulling out, which I fear will only encourage our enemies to wait us out—equally a mistake.” You’ve changed your mind.

SEN. BIDEN: Well, I have changed my mind, but I haven’t changed my mind in any fundamental way…

Not in a fundamental way? In 2005 Biden believed, much as Republicans did that it would be a “gigantic mistake” to set a deadline for troop withdrawal because it would only “encourage our enemies”, yet two years later after stating President Bush is failing he said “I will insist on a firm beginning to withdraw the troops and I will insist on a target date to get American combat forces out” Granted, my IQ may be lower than Senator Biden’s, but to me this looks like a fundamental change.

If we look further into the past at Biden’s history, we see more of his experience going Wide Right (or wide left as it were):

In the 1970s, Mr. Biden opposed giving aid to the South Vietnamese government in its war against the North. Congress’s cut-off of funds contributed to the fall of an American ally, helped communism advance, and led to mass death throughout the region. Mr. Biden also advocated defense cuts so massive that both Edmund Muskie and Walter Mondale, both leading liberal Democrats at the time, opposed them.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and, we later learned, was much closer to attaining a nuclear weapon than we had believed. President George H.W. Bush sought war authorization from Congress. Mr. Biden voted against the first Gulf War, asking: “What vital interests of the United States justify sending Americans to their deaths in the sands of Saudi Arabia?”

In 2006, after having voted three years earlier to authorize President George W. Bush’s war to liberate Iraq, Mr. Biden argued for the partition of Iraq, which would have led to its crack-up.

Senator Biden may know the names of all the world leaders, and yes he has probably spoken with most of them as well. While that is wonderful experience, nothing takes the place of ‘judgment’ as Obama might say. Yet in nearly every major foreign policy decision, Biden has been wrong. This is not “change” we can believe in, this is Jimmy Carter change we can believe in.

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Barack Obama, Dumb Dems, Election 2008, Features, Iraq, Politics