Biden's Bluntness

Anyone who has ever known a person whose charm far exceeded his or her personal standards of behavior would be reluctant to vote for a person based on personality alone. People even say that they long for candidates who are willing to say what they truly think and are not obsessed with how the voting public thinks of them. I wonder, however, how many of those people would really vote for a candidate who says what he thinks even in situations where simple politeness would dictate that he not openly express what he is thinking. Although I thought Joe Biden's overal performance in the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate was fairly impressive, I also thought his characteristic bluntness hurt his standing as a candidate as much if not more than it helped him.

It is actually a good move, in my opinion, for a politician to be direct when answering direct questions as in a debate. When Biden talked about the impracticality of Richardson's Iraq plan, for instance, his bluntness served him well. Biden was also direct and aggressive in talking about gun control and Darfur; he seemed passionate about these issues. Biden's bluntness is not limited to the issues, however, and I think this is a problem for him. He was the only candidate to make a sarcastic remark regarding Jackie and Dunlap's video question about Al Gore, though a lot of people probably cringed at the over-the-top and stereotypical personas of the infamous Internet duo at first (I know I did, though the question turned out to be quite cute and inoffensive). When a question was asked in a similarly over-the-top way about gun control, Biden questioned the questioner's mental competence and implied, albeit jokingly, that the questioner might be planning to attack him because of his answer! The phrase "loony with an semiautomatic" might have flashed through my mind after I watched the video, but I still think it is wrong to assume someone is nuts just because he calls his favorite weapon his "baby" and even more wrong to suggest such a thing publicly in front of an audience of millions. Biden also reacted negatively to another silly question at the end of the debate; evidently, he felt it was beneath his dignity to be forced to say something nice about the candidate to his left. Granted, it was a kindergarten exercise, but the CNN/YouTube debate was all about allowing direct connections between members of the public and the candidates to be formed. Such connections are difficult to make when the candidates do not deal with members of the public in a respectful manner, even if the questions the public ask are sometimes a little on the silly side. Personally, I wouldn't want to vote for a candidate that could be expected to mock or insult me if I interacted with him personally, even if I agreed with that candidate on a lot of issues. I think Biden would be respectful when speaking towards the average American, but the government must be fair when dealing with ALL people: the just and the unjust, the wise and the foolish, and the flawless and the flawed must all be looked upon with the same eye and be judged according to the same set of rules.