Joseph Biden states a historical anachronism

Good news!  Joseph Biden made a wacky comment worthy of derisive laughter.  (Lifted from the libertarian magazine Reason’s blog, which plucked it from somewhere else, where it came from an interview with Katie Couric.)

When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, “look, here’s what happened.”

I am circumspect about such gaffes, tending to view the whole lot of them as generally not disqualifying — though they do tend to be illustrative of something.  So, Governor Roosevelt’s statements on the Stock Market Crash must have really taken a bite out of the audience share then currently held by the number one television show of the era — the Felix the Cat Ticking Clock Show.  Meanwhile, for all his faults, President Hoover was busy using the mass medium of the day — radio — to communicate his policies and views to the American people.  In this case Biden is shuffling about for an example to slam George Bush against for delinquency and putting in a good word for Franklin Roosevelt, and he misfired.

The bigger issue is that this would be a bad analogy even if were not a historical anachronism.  Joseph Biden seems to be suggesting that anyone anywhere wants to hear George Bush address the problem, that somehow that is going to soothe the nation.  In these days of Great Peril, an address from George Bush is the last thing that the nation needs; it could only exasperate our nation’s Crisis of Confidence.  Frankly, I think this shows a lapse of judgement on Joseph Biden’s part which is not befitting of (potential) Presidency.

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