Biden gaffes leave Democrats with mixed emotions

Some worry about missteps in Palin debate

Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden greeted youngsters during a rally at Detroit Public Library Sunday. Biden is scheduled to meet Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in a nationally televised debate tomorrow. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON - Joe Biden began his remarks to the National Jewish Democratic Council last week with a joke about how Jews like to argue.

The Yeshiva crew team, he said, sent a spy to Cambridge to find out why the Harvard rowers always beat them. The informant called his coach from alongside the river. "He said, 'They've got eight guys rowing and only one yelling!' " he said, to laughter.

Biden can get away with this sort of mild ethnic humor - he is a four-decade veteran of political banter, an Irish Catholic from working class Scranton, Pa., and a politician who sometimes runs a little hot. Trudy Mason, a Democratic activist from New York, said his warmth nicely balances Obama's cooler demeanor.

"He speaks from the kishkas," she said, using the Yiddish word for "gut."

But speaking from the kishkas can get a politician into trouble, and as Biden prepares to debate Sarah Palin tomorrow, some Democrats are worried. On the trail last week, the downside was on full display, as Biden mangled historical facts and twice contradicted his own campaign. The gaffes piled up at such a rate that Republicans dedicated a website to tracking them.

His emotional reactions sometimes appear to drive him to fudge answers. When CBS's Katie Couric prodded him about an Obama ad criticizing McCain for not knowing how to use a computer, Biden called one of his own campaign's ads "terrible" and declared that if he'd known about it beforehand, "we'd never have done it." Later, he not only had to soften his criticism but also admit he had never even seen the ad.

Waxing indignant about President Bush's response to the financial crisis, he also told Couric that when the stock market crashed in 1929, "FDR got on television" and explained to the American people what happened. In fact, Herbert Hoover was president and radio was the medium of the era.

Even for a politician in a fiercely competitive campaign, Biden has an overdeveloped sense of hyperbole. He speaks sotto voce about the gravity of the historical moment, dispenses hard-luck father's cheer to the downtrodden with a lusty growl - "Get up!" - and at times weeps at the mention of his wife and infant daughter's deaths in a car accident 36 years ago.

He thunders outrage at John McCain's philosophy on healthcare and describes the foreign policy consequences of another Republican victory in near-apocalyptic terms, telling donors in Kentucky the other day that relations with Russia could spin "literally, literally, literally beyond our control for the better part of a generation." (He also uses the word "literally" with almost felonious frequency.)

His enthusiasm can also lead him into politically hazardous territory.

At an intimate, $2 million fund-raiser put on by a group of trial lawyers in a private home in Washington, D.C. last week, he boasted that he had "done more than any other senator" for trial lawyers. There are "two groups that stand between us and the barbarians at the gate," he professed. "It's you and organized labor."

And even though few would question his long experience in foreign affairs, he can sometimes sound as if he's straining a bit too hard to prove his importance on the world stage.

"When Russia invaded Georgia, I got a call from Misha Saakashvili. He said, 'Joe, will you come over? Will you come?' " Biden said, in a foreign policy speech in Cincinnati last week. "I went to see him in Tblisi. I sat there while Russian tanks were still on the outskirts of the city. And we laid out a specific proposal. We made it crystal clear what Barack and I would do . . . to preserve the territorial integrity of Georgia."

But as he campaigned in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania last week, those who came to see him said they were familiar with some of Biden's recent stumbles, and they weren't bothered by them.

"He's authentic," said Janice Gorman-Weiss, a 48-year-old marketer and activist from Wyoming, Ohio, who came to hear Biden's foreign policy speech in Cincinnati last week. "I'm sick of people being perfectly polished so you're not even seeing the real person. If he says things that aren't exactly a perfect fit with what the campaign wants him to say, that's OK."

LaVerne Mitchell, a 58-year-old teacher and the former mayor of Lincoln Heights, Ohio, shrugged at the flap over Biden's criticism of the ad targeting McCain.

"You know what?" she said. "I don't want Obama and Biden to completely think alike - if they both think alike, they're going to miss something."

Biden's emotional openness also helps him connect with crowds in way that Obama has sometimes struggled to do. In a school gym in Greensburg, Penn., about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh, the crowd had to wait for Biden to steady his voice as he told the crowd about how Steelers founder Art Rooney, whose son Dan introduced Biden at the event, had surprised Biden's sons when they were little boys in the hospital recovering from the accident that killed their mother and sister.

Biden said he returned to his sons' room after a brief outing to find them a Christmas tree and discovered them in their beds, clutching footballs and looking "lighted up like a Christmas tree."

"They said, 'Daddy, Rocky Bleier gave it to us,' " Biden said, his voice petering out. For a very long moment, he wiped away tears. The crowd cheered, as if to comfort him, as he began to explain Art Rooney had done it without fanfare, and his voice broke again.

"I really apologize, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have tried to do this," he said. "But anyway, it's a helluva family, it's a helluva family."

"Anybody who's ever lost a loved one can certainly identify with that," said Lauren Deemer, a 40-year-old certified nurse's aide from Greensburg.

"He's warm," said Madaline Waters, an elderly woman in the audience. "When he's talking, he throws a warm feeling out to you. He wants you to listen to what he's saying because he really, really believes it."

The crowds Biden attracted on the campaign trail last week looked much more like Hillary Clinton's than Obama's - hard-core Democrats, elderly folks, teachers, union members. Many said they saw Palin as hopelessly inexperienced and were raring for Biden to cut her to ribbons in tomorrow's debate. Their biggest fear is not that he will be too exuberant, but that he will hold back out of fear of seeming overbearing.

On the rope line in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Biden heard it again and again.

"You're taking her down, right?" Joe Barlow, a 35-year-old tech writer from Scranton, called out. He said Biden smiled, but said nothing.