Look at Biden before you criticize Palin

I read with interest your editorial regarding the McCain staffers’ continued attacks on Sarah Palin. I suppose running a losing campaign, they feel compelled to justify the loss by attacking the person who drew the most crowds and re-energized the campaign. However they try to rationalize their behavior, it’s unseemly and unprofessional.

I take issue with your attack on Sarah Palin as a candidate unfit for the role of Vice President. Excuse me, but have you been paying attention to guy who sits in that chair now? I guess Biden is so glib and we have all become so accustomed to his outrageous misstatements that we not only overlook what he says but we have come to expect it. That’s okay for a Senator, I guess. But he’s a heartbeat away from the Presidency. The man called Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney to task over their lack of understanding of Article 1 of the Constitution as it applies to the role of the Vice President and he got it wrong! Here are some other examples of his demonstrated incompetency:

(BIDEN GETS VEEP ROLE WRONG, By Stephen Dinan | Washington Times, Friday, October 3, 2008)

“During the VP debate, Biden sought to attack Vice President Dick Cheney and imply that Governor Palin didn’t know any better than to follow Cheney’s lead. Biden said the vice president’s only role is to support the president and to preside over the Senate ‘only in a time when in fact there’s a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.’

The Constitution, though, actually says the vice president is always president of the Senate and legal scholars say he has the right to preside at any time. Early vice presidents, such as Thomas Jefferson, actively exercised that role, the vice president still keeps offices at the Capitol, and scholars say it wasn’t until the middle of the 20th century that the vice president had an office at the executive office building.

The president pro tempore, usually the senior senator from the majority party, takes over only when the vice president is absent. In recent practice, as the vice president has taken a bigger role in the executive, that’s meant the Senate operates almost all of the time without the vice president in the chair.”

This is a man who has served in the Senate for almost 40 years! You would think he would pick up something just by osmosis! If he were actually paying attention….

Biden either lied or was blithely ignorant of McCain’s voting record on troop funding when he asserted that McCain and Obama voted the same way against funding the troops in the field. John McCain opposed a bill that included a timeline. Biden relies on the press corps not to fact check and correct anything he says.

Biden falsely accused Governor Palin of supporting a windfall-profits tax in Alaska. In reality, she reformed the state tax and revenue system. She saved the citizens of Alaska a lot of money and gave them a tax rebate based on new contracts with the oil and gas industry.

One of Biden’s most egregious lies was that John McCain was against regulation. I suppose this was part of his campaign tactic to bring up McCain’s past association with the Keating 5 scandal. That was 25 years ago. The truth of the matter is that John McCain called for more oversight for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. If his proposal had been taken up by the Congress we could have avoided a lot of the home foreclosures and bank failures that followed. Maybe Joe Biden was busy somewhere else when John McCain was trying to head off the current crisis….

“More recently, Biden was accused of disclosing the location of a classified bunker located in the basement of the vice presidential residence at the Naval Observatory. Alexander issued a statement saying the vice president had been misunderstood and, in fact, had been referring to an upstairs guest room.”

www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22840.html#ixzz0KyQ62lSI&D (I saw the clip of him talking. There’s not a chance he was misunderstood. It was another case of Biden’s inability to keep his mouth shut)

My point is – you are taking Sarah Palin to task for not being up to the job of Vice President without mentioning that Joe Biden has never demonstrated competency even to be a senator. He is known as an exaggerator, a windbag, a narcissist, a man in love with the sound of his own voice. He is not known for being a great Statesman or as having great intellect. He’s like that favorite eccentric uncle that Obama mentioned. You just smile to yourself and think “There he goes again. Oh well, he’s harmless”.

I initially thought your editorial was going to expose the unrelenting, unfair, untenable attacks that have Sarah Palin has endured since she accepted the McCain camp’s offer to be the running mate. But you simply took the opportunity to take another run at her. Enough already! Take a good look at the guy who actually has the job!

Nancy Crayton

Sammamish