RSSBiden Leaves The Senate With A WHOPPER On His Lips
Warner Todd Huston | January 17, 2009
-By Warner Todd Huston
The gregarious and gracious Jake Tapper of ABC posted an amusing story of the rambling and rather pointless farewell speech Thursday that Joe “the mouf” Biden left on the Senate floor (you make the joke here). Tapper headlined his piece “Biden Yields the Floor (Literally).” The “literally” was just Tapper’s little jab because apparently Biden used the word nine times during his loquacious 5,659 word address to his Senate colleagues.
From Biden’s speech, Tapper relates one of Joe’s little … shall we say, “stories”? I say “stories” as in those same sort of unbelievable tall tales that your favorite uncle would always blurt out at family gatherings. You know, like the one where that wacky uncle claimed he was there when Tojo surrendered in Japan, or he was they guy that first taught Michael Jackson how to moon-walk, or he was really the guy that invented the Internet? Yeah, that kind of crazy uncle.
ANYhoo (to steal a Tapperism), Joe gave us all the following “story” for posterity:
Biden claimed he’d walked up the steps (of the Senate) and went in the reception room. “There was no one there,” he said. “And the glass doors, those French doors that lead in behind the chamber opened.”
“I just walked in,” Biden said. “Literally, I walked in. And I walked in down here, and I came through those doors. And I walked into the chamber, and the lights were still on. And I was awe-struck. Literally awe-struck. And what in God’s name made me do it, but I walked up… and I sat in the presiding officer’s chair. And I was mesmerized.
“And the next thing I know,” he recalled, “I feel this hand on my shoulder.” It was Capitol policeman who spun Biden around and asked, “‘What are you doing?’ And after a few moments, he realized I was just a dumb-struck kid and didn’t arrest me or anything. … That was my first time I walked on the Senate floor.”
“It’s literally a true story,” the vice president-in-waiting assured the crowd.
Nine or 10 years later, Biden said that same Capitol Hill policeman asked Biden if he remembered him.
“Welcome to the floor legally,” Biden recalled that cop telling him.
Number one, how would the young Biden not have noticed that a Capitol Policeman was entering that giant, empty chamber about to nab him as a trespasser? How can he expect us to believe that “the next thing” he knew was that he was being grabbed up by police?
But, an even harder thing to believe is that 10 years later the same policeman would have a), remembered him as a kid, b), realized he just became a Senator, c), would still have been working there, and d), have remembered the previous incident enough to give that cutsey “welcome legally” comment to a new Senator Biden. It is all just too absurd to believe. It seems more like a tall tale than a true one. Joe is that crazy uncle at the family gathering.
So, it is likely that Joe Biden leaves the Senate with one more whopper added to a long, 35 year history of them. Then again, with Joe’s equally long history of plagiarism, maybe the story is true… but happened to someone else? Perhaps some Irish politician experienced it?
Of course, I am sure his Senate colleagues were happy to attend Joe’s last harangue on the Senate floor. I can imagine that his colleagues were happy to see the last of him for his constant 5,000 word stem-winders. And, it doesn’t seem likely that many of his Senate colleagues thought too much of the man in the first place since over the entirety his 35 or so years in that body they never looked to him to be a leader on much of anything. After all, aside from a few Senate committee chairmanships – which his long tenure alone would seem to guarantee – he was never asked to become the minority leader, majority leader, or asked to fill any of the other high positions in the Democratic Party or similarly powerful Senate roles. It appears that he was always just good ol’ Joe. The funny guy that everyone liked but that everyone also thought of as mostly inconsequential.
And now, yaaa for us, he is a heartbeat away from being president of the United States.
Literally.
(Photo credit: washingtonpost.com)
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