Interesting. I read the article which reported Biden's remarks, and my impression was that of a man warning his faithful followers that electing Barack Obama to the presidency would not make all of America's problems go away. Of course, electing John McCain wouldn't make them all go away either, but that outcome would mean that Joe Biden would remain a senator, at least for now.
I think that what Biden said was true. One of the reasons (not the only one, of course) for the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 was that Nikita K. thought he could bluff the relatively young and inexperienced John F. and force him to accept the missiles in Cuba. After all, Nikita had fought the Germans in the Great Patriotic War, and I believe he was an enlisted man during the October Revolution in 1917. He was battle-tested, as was Kennedy, but Nikita thought John would blink first.
That's what Biden was talking about, I believe. Somebody is going to engage in a staring contest with our next president and see who blinks first. If Obama is elected, it will be a test of his youth and relative inexperience. If McCain is elected, it will be a test both to see if the old man still has it and if the woman in the number two slot can pull the trigger when the moose are shooting back. Biden has to believe that his foreign policy experience in the Senate will be a valuable asset to President Obama.
This is indeed campaign fodder, and it's politically unfortunate that Joe didn't notice the press in the back of the room until the end of his remarks (as the article reports it), but I find it hard to bust a politician for being honest. It's so rare these days.
