On the very same day he told us that Colin Powell should have ended all questions about Barack Obama’s national security bona fides, Joe Biden comes along to tell us precisely why we should be scared of Obama as commander-in-chief:

“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. “And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

Well, golly, if Obama is so untested that we will have a series of international crises — at the very time we are in a financial meltdown — which will make the Cuban Missille Crisis look like a walk in the park, shouldn’t we vote for the other guy who will keep all the miscreants in their place? Now, maybe we should rest easy because, according to Biden, “I’ve forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know, so I’m not being falsely humble with you.” (Maybe Hezbollah’s occupation of Lebanaon was one of the things he forgot.)

Something tells me this is material for an ad that’s a lot more credible than Hillary Clinton’s “3 a.m.” ad. That one came from his arguably frantic opponent–this one is from his running mate.

UPDATE:

Rudy Giuliani and Randy Scheunemann, McCain-Palin Foreign Policy Adviser, just completed a media call on the Joe Biden comments. Scheunemann invoked Michael Kinsley — a gaffe is when a politician is caught speaking the truth. Giuliani dubbed the remarks “extraordinary” and said that he never recalled a VP candidate announcing that electing his candidate would provoke multiple challeneges to test his mettle. Giuliani suggested that Biden must “continue to harbor serious doubts” about Barack Obama’s readiness to be commander-in-chief.

At the conclusion of the call, both McCain surrogates urged the press to start asking Biden what he meant. Giuliani remarked that only Biden knows for sure what he meant, but that Biden’s remarks that the Obama camp would need the support of the top donors because they might not “get it right in a crisis. . . totally baffles me.” They both observed that, had a Republican made the remarks, it would be on the front page of the New York Times.

Bottom line: the mega-gaffe came at a remarkably good moment for McCain. The McCain camp certainly hopes it will have as great or greater an impact as the Colin Powell endorsement. But given the MSM declared priority–getting The One elected–I suspect they won’t be staying up late to check the Gray Lady’s front page for Tuesday.

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 9:40 AM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.