Straight Man: Defusing the Biden bomb

[CrimsonWhite]

Good article on Vice President Biden.

The vice president of the United States folds himself into the rear seat of the black SUV and immediately starts cracking wise about the impromptu interview he has graciously granted me--pretty much all of which is to remain off the record. "You know how disciplined I am," he chuckles, blue eyes crinkling and twinkling. "I'm known for my discipline." Biden reaches into a compartment beside him, whips out a large microphone, and threatens to hold forth for everyone within earshot of the vehicle's external PA system. Only the faintest shadow of anxiety falls across communications director Jay Carney, perched in the jump seat across from us. To be shepherd of this veep's image requires learning to take a breath and, as Biden aides and assorted fans like to put it, "let Joe be Joe."

Of course, letting Joe be Joe has been known to cause the occasional headache for Team Obama. Just over two weeks before Election Day, Biden uttered this unhelpful prediction at a Seattle fund-raiser: "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. ... Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy." The day after the inauguration, the new vice president, while swearing in a batch of federal employees, joked about his memory being "not as good as Justice Roberts's"--a jab at the Supreme Court chief's flubbing of the presidential oath--prompting Obama to give Biden a disapproving nudge. A couple of weeks later, at the House Democrats' retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia, Biden couldn't resist sharing his notexactly-on-message view of the economic recovery effort: "If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, there's still a thirty percent chance we're going to get it wrong." Later asked about Biden's remark, Obama went with the wry brush-off: "I don't remember exactly what Joe was referring to. Not surprisingly."

Straight Man