Joe Biden In The Senate, Uncensored And Unscripted
Rolling Stone
For the media, Joe Biden is the gift that keeps on giving. Joe Biden was at the Capitol yesterday, swearing in all those senators about to start a new term in the upper chamber. But Biden didn’t just recite the oath for senators to repeat. Instead, he was Joe Biden.
Among other things, Biden swore in the infant son of Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy and joked with the husband of North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp to “spread your legs because you’re going to be frisked.” This was just the tip of the iceberg for Biden, whose greatest hits have been compiled by Talking Points Memo in this video.
The result has already been eaten up by journalists who rarely see a politician go off the script and act spontaneously, let alone one as wacky as the Vice President. The trend in American politics is for less off-the-cuff interaction by elected officials. This was particularly reinforced this year after a presidential election where both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney seemed to be almost preternaturally scripted and those candidates who weren’t, like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, imploded as a result.
The hope is that politics and politicians will not continue the disturbing trend towards bland men in suits constantly trying to avoid gaffes. But, even if that is inevitable, at least there are always throwbacks like Joe Biden to remind us of that long ago distant time when politicians were actually people. It’s an era that journalists are nostalgic for, even voters are indifferent.
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