It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking.... Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy....Translation: an Obama presidency will invite attacks from several international fronts, and my kid brother Barry won't be able to handle it. Just pleeeease hang with us since what we do probably won't be the right response...I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate… 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.
Nice. Very inspiring. Is it any wonder that Biden has once again been safely tucked away from any cameras or microphones?
Sarah Palin jumps all over it with her trademark wit:
Two weeks from today, Americans will be asked to cast their vote for the next president of the United States. There's no time to wait. Let's get right to it.
Did you hear what Senator Biden said at a fundraiser on Sunday? He guaranteed that if Barack Obama is elected, we'll face an international crisis within the first six months of their administration. He told Democrat donors to mark his words – that there were "at least four or five scenarios" that would place our country at risk in an Obama administration. Thanks for the warning, Joe!
He didn't specify what all those four or five scenarios will be, but for clues, let's review the Obama foreign policy agenda.
Our opponent wants to sit down with the world's worst dictators. With no preconditions, he proposes to meet with a regime in Teheran that vows to "wipe Israel off the map." Let's call that crisis scenario number one.
Senator Obama has also advocated sending our U.S. military into Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani government. Invading the sovereign territory of a troubled partner in the war against terrorism. We'll call that scenario number two.
He opposed the surge strategy that has finally brought victory in Iraq within sight. He's voted to cut off funding for our troops, leaving our young men and women at grave risk. He wants to pull out, leaving some 25 million Iraqis at the mercy of Iranian-supported Shiite extremists and al Qaeda in Iraq. By his own admission, this could mean our troops would have to go back to Iraq. Crisis scenario number three.
After the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence – the kind of response that would only encourage Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine next. That would be crisis scenario number four.
But I guess the looming crisis that most worries the Obama campaign right now is Joe Biden's next speaking engagement. Let's call that crisis scenario number five.
The real problem is that these warnings from Joe Biden are similar to his earlier assessment of Barack Obama. It wasn't so long ago that he said Barack Obama wasn't up to the job, and that, quote, "the presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training."
The same Joe Biden said he would be honored to run on the ticket with John McCain because, quote, "the country would be better off." And here we have some common ground. I want a president who spent 22 years in uniform defending our country. I want a president who isn't afraid to use the word "victory" when he talks about the wars we are fighting. I want a president who's ready on Day One. I want a president with the experience and the judgment and the wisdom to meet the next international crisis – or better yet to avoid it. I want John McCain as our commander-in-chief.
McCain takes aim, too:
Just last night, Senator Biden guaranteed that if Senator Obama is elected, we will have an international crisis to test America's new President. We don't want a President who invites testing from the world at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting in two wars.
What is more troubling is that Senator Biden told their campaign donors that when that crisis hits, they would have to stand with them because it wouldn't be apparent Senator Obama would have the right response.
Forget apparent. Senator Obama won't have the right response, and we know that because we've seen the wrong response from him over and over during this campaign. He opposed the surge strategy that is bringing us victory in Iraq and will bring us victory in Afghanistan. He said he would sit down unconditionally with the world's worst dictators. When Russia invaded Georgia, Sen. Obama said the invaded country should show restraint.
Bill Kristol at the American Standard offers this analysis:
McCain is right that the last part of Biden's statement is the most troubling--that when Obama is tested, it won't be apparent that his response is correct. But what does Biden mean by this? What kind of response by Obama is Biden forecasting?
So Biden expects a test of the kind Kennedy faced after his disastrous meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June, 1961, less than five months into Kennedy's presidency. Biden's presumably thinking of the Soviet-backed construction of the Berlin Wall a couple of months later. Kennedy did nothing, and was criticized for his weakness back home.
So--leaving aside the merits of what Kennedy did or didn't do in 1961--Biden is forecasting that Obama will have what seems to be a weak response to a provocation from, say, Iran or Russia, and he's urging the liberals of Seattle and elsewhere to stand with Obama against the expected domestic criticism.
In other words, Biden is forecasting inaction by Obama in the face of testing by a dictator. I suspect he's right in this forecast. McCain might want to clarify this point. It's not just that Obama's own running mate expects an international crisis early in his presidency. It's not just that Obama has a weak foreign policy record. It's that Biden himself expects what will appear to be a weak response from Obama to testing by a dictator.
Now Biden presumaby thinks such an apparently weak response would be in our long-term interest. But McCain needs to force that debate: "Sen. Obama, will you in fact do nothing in response to a Putin provocation against Ukraine or a final push by Ahmadinejad toward nuclear weapons? Isn't that what your running mate has forecast? Isn't it awfully dangerous to forecast weakness on the part of an American president?"
That's some awfully good advice. Remember, one of McCain's bigger spikes in national support over the past few months was in response to his words on the Russia-Georgia conflict. He owns Obama on national security, and this undercut of confidence from Obama's own VP is a gift that McCain can exploit. He needs to keep hammering away at it.
Interestingly, NBC has once again shown its pro-Obama stripes by selectively editing out that little phrase (multiple times) about Obama being incapable of handling whatever attack comes. The McCain campaign rightly called them out on their bias. That is quite obviously the crux of the statement, so NBC's deliberate omission is inexcusable. Plus, you know it's blatantly biased when even Dan Rather says that if Palin had said something like that it would be front-page above-the-fold news.
This could be another winning issue for McCain, if he continues to ride it hard. Now is not the time to get squeamish, but it doesn't look like he is. Good...
There's my two cents.
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