There is another Vice-Presidential nominee in the race. I can't help thinking that the furore over Sarah Palin has thrown Senator Joe Biden a lifeline; the spotlight has been completely off him. You may be forgiven for asking "Joe Who?"
Biden has apparently been a gaffe machine on the campaign trail. Here is a post (with video) suggesting some of his campaign stops have been a little, ahem, "buffoonish". Bizarre, certainly. Biden recently referred to catching "Obama" on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border (he corrected himself, but still, a hell of a slip of the tongue). Asked about Sarah Palin, he referred to her as the "Lieutenant Governor". He may be the only man in America not paying the woman any attention, I suppose. He has also accused the driver of the car involved in the accident the night his wife was killed of being drunk; there was no such suggestion at the autopsy and Biden has had to retract :
"Since his vice presidential nomination, Joe Biden's 2007 statement that a "guy who allegedly ... drank his lunch" and drove the truck that struck and killed his first wife and daughter has gained national media traction.
Alcohol didn't play a role in the 1972 crash, investigators found. But as recently as last week, the syndicated TV show Inside Edition aired a clip from 2001 of Biden describing the accident to an audience at the University of Delaware and saying the truck driver "stopped to drink instead of drive."
The senator's statements don't jibe with news and law enforcement reports from the time, which cleared driver Curtis C. Dunn, who died in 1999, of wrongdoing.
"To see it coming from [Biden's] mouth, I just burst into tears," Dunn's daughter, Glasgow resident Pamela Hamill, 44, said Wednesday. "My dad was always there for us. Now we feel like we should be there for him because he's not here to defend himself."
Biden spokesman David Wade said Wednesday that the senator "fully accepts the Dunn family's word that these rumors were false."
It's unclear who first suggested alcohol was a factor in the crash, but since Barack Obama tapped Biden to be his running mate on Aug. 23, The New York Times, National Public Radio and The Economist have run stories that characterized Dunn as a drunken driver.
"The rumor about alcohol being involved by either party, especially the truck driver, is incorrect," said Jerome O. Herlihy, a Delaware Superior Court judge who was chief deputy attorney general and worked with crash investigators in 1972."
Biden has said some strong words in defence of Sarah Palin's family and some gracious words of personal loyalty for his friend John McCain. He is widely liked. But if the media ever turn their biased spotlight in his direction, I believe the "Eagleton scenario" may play out on the Democratic, rather than the Republican, ticket. Paging Senator Clinton?
