I’m beginning to think that Joe Biden’s habit of stretching the truth might be a family problem. From a Vogue profile of his wife, Jill Biden:
It wasn’t all that long ago that Jill Biden was forbidding her husband to run for president. She tells a funny story about a day when a bunch of Democratic Party bigwigs had planted themselves in her living room to try to convince Joe Biden that 2004 was his year to unseat George Bush. Jill was sitting out by the pool in a bikini—fuming. Unable to stand it any longer, she got up, found a Magic Marker, and wrote the word no across her stomach and then paraded through the meeting. “They got the message,” she says with a laugh.
Right. Now I can believe his wife thought better of him running for office, but the idea that party leaders were lobbying him to run is pretty rich. Replace “a bunch of Democratic Party bigwigs” with “some shady political consultant and the guy who cleans the gutters who happened to be at the house that day” and that story begins to make sense. I simply just can’t imagine any high ranking Democrats encouraging him: “Listen pardner, we want you to go out there and make a run for it! On the trail, make sure you talk to lots of strangers and just say whatever pops in your head, especially if it’s about their skin color, ethnicity or how you think they’re dumb. With some hard work, we’re sure you’ll get at least one percent of the vote in Iowa. But the important thing is that you don’t hesitate to hop on board the tragicomic roundabout that is your presidential ambition. Carpe Diem, Joe.”