Josh Marshall argues that bad picks by Democratic governors in filling vacant seats make it harder than necessary to retain those seats.

I was just looking at this run-down of recent polls by Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling. The upshot is that while it seems extremely unlikely Republicans could regain control of the senate next year, it’s not impossible and they look well positioned to make a big dent in the Dems’ majority in the upper chamber.

Most of this has to do with the factors we know about — a bad economy, a charged up right-wing, President Obama’s decline in popularity. But looking more closely at the races something else stood out to me: just how many of the vulnerable seats are ones where bad or questionable picks by Democratic governors have put Democrats in an unnecessarily weak position.

To be clear, not all of these are bad candidates/incumbent senators. But politically they’re all very weak — probably unnecessarily so given the states they come from.

The ones that stand out are Beau Biden in Delaware, yet to be determined in Illinois, Kirsten Gillibrand in New York, and Michael Bennet in Colorado.

[...]

Some of these picks stemmed from personal idiosyncrasies, others unique personal situations. But all were made in the post-2008 political climate when the Democratic ascendancy seemed to flow into an endless future. And the Dems could pay a real price.

Josh admits that there may not have been better candidates to fill the seats in question but he’s frustrated that considerations other than selecting the candidate best able to defend the seat in 2010 were a factor.  And that’s a reasonable enough argument.  Especially since the seats in question would be quite safe had Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Ken Salazar not vacated them prematurely to take seats in the Obama administration.

At the same time, however, I’d note that the Republican candidates to fill these vacancies don’t have the advantage of incumbency.  And they’re presumably running uphill fights, given that Democrats so recently won these seats.

The scuttlebutt that’s coming out now in Washington is that President Obama doesn’t much like the plans for Afghanistan offered by his advisors:

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

That stance comes in the midst of forceful reservations about a possible troop buildup from the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, according to a second top administration official.

In strongly worded classified cables to Washington, Eikenberry said he had misgivings about sending in new troops while there are still so many questions about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Despite his having campaigned for two years on the urgency and necessity of the war in Afghanistan, it’s not difficult to see why President Obama would have misgivings on doubling down there. Victory at a cost and in a timeframe acceptable to the American people is far from assured and may even be impossible. And then there’s domestic criticism along the lines of Nicholas Kristof’s column in the New York Times today:

So if President Obama dispatches another 30,000 or 40,000 troops, on top of the 68,000 already there, that would bring the total annual bill for our military presence there to perhaps $100 billion — or more. And we haven’t even come to the human costs.

As for health care reforms, the 10-year cost suggests an average of $80 billion to $110 billion per year, depending on what the final bill looks like.

Granted, the health care costs will continue indefinitely, while the United States cannot sustain 100,000 troops in Afghanistan for many years. On the other hand, the health care legislation pays for itself, according to the Congressional Budget Office, while the deployment in Afghanistan is unfinanced and will raise our budget deficits and undermine our long-term economic security.

So doesn’t it seem odd to hear hawks say that health reform is fiscally irresponsible, while in the next breath they cheer a larger deployment of troops in Afghanistan?

Meanwhile, lack of health insurance kills about 45,000 Americans a year, according to a Harvard study released in September. So which is the greater danger to our homeland security, the Taliban or our dysfunctional insurance system?

It seems to me that similar criticisms could be made of all of our military spending, our overseas military bases, our foreign aid, of supporting embassies in other countries, and so on. Are those really the alternatives or is it a false choice? Might we withdraw from Afghanistan only to find ourselves spending even more on defense a couple of years down the road?

I think I’ve made my own views pretty clear. I think that there are tactical, strategic, legal, and moral reasons for not simply withdrawing from Afghanistan but, following the lead of Afghanistan authority Rory Stewart, I think that we need to take a longer, more modest, and less military view. I think that we’ll need what Ralph Peters has described as “a compact, lethal force” in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future but I’m skeptical of any large force of ours in Afghanistan whether for counter-terrorism as has been suggested by Vice President Joe Biden or counter-insurgency as Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s plan that’s on the president’s desk now provides.

What will the president do? What should the president do?

Please leave your policy prescriptions in the comments including the strategic objectives, how you’d accomplish them, the relationship between your preferred approach and the strategic objectives, and how you would mitigate the risks of your approach.

Stephen Coll, president of the New America Foundation, has an article in Foreign Policy making the case for more humble objectives in Afghanistan. In the article he criticizes both the counter-insurgency strategy advocated by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U. S. forces in Afghanistan:

To succeed, counterinsurgency approaches require deep, supple, and adaptive understanding of local conditions. And yet, as General McChrystal pointed out in his assessment, since 2001, international forces operating in Afghanistan have “not sufficiently studied Afghanistan’s peoples, whose needs, identities and grievances vary from province to province and from valley to valley.” To succeed, the United States must “redouble efforts to understand the social and political dynamics of…all regions of the country and take action that meets the needs of the people, and insist that [Afghan government] officials do the same.”

and the counter-terrorism strategy advocated recently by Vice President Joe Biden:

There are narrower objections that should be registered about the “counterterrorism-only” or “counterterrorism-mainly” argument. It is probably impractical over a long period of time to wage an intelligence-derived counterterrorism campaign along the Pakistan-Afghan border if a cooperating Afghan government does not have access to the local population; if American forces are not present; and if the Pakistani state has no incentive to cooperate. This is exactly the narrative that unfolded during the 1990s and led to failure on Sept. 11 for the United States.

The article is chock-full of intriguing observations about the situation in Afghanistan and is well worth your attention. I certainly agree with him that we should focus our energies in Afghanistan on objectives we can actually accomplish and that further real American interests. In the light of this I wonder if the bar has not been set too low for Gen. McChrystal? I read Gen. McChrystal’s report as a recommendation for averting defeat. Are they the same as the requirements for achieving success? Or will that require significantly more resources? Gen. McChrystal does say that both more resources and a definite change in strategy are necessary for success:

Success is achievable, but it will not be attained simply by trying harder or “doubling down” on the previous strategy. Additional resources are required, but focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely. The key take away from this assessment is the urgent need for a significant change to our strategy and the way that we think and operate.

and

Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it. Resourcing communicates commitment, but we must also balance force levels to enable effective ANSF partnering and provide population security, while avoiding perceptions of coalition dominance. Ideally, the ANSF must lead this fight, but they will not have enough capability in the near-term given the insurgency’s growth rate. In the interim, coalition forces must provide a bridge capability to protect critical segments of the population. The status quo will lead to failure if we wait for the ANSF to grow.

However, I don’t see a commitment in the report that if the general receives what he’s requested that it will achieve the desired outcome. Am I being too critical? Or, as Stephen Coll proposes, should we be seeking more humble objectives in Afghanistan?

Ariana Huffington has generated quite a bit of buzz for her unlikely-to-be-taken suggestion that Vice President Biden resign in protest if President Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan.   The cuteness of the suggestion has unfortunately overshadowed the opening paragraph in Holly Bailey and Evan Thomas’ Newsweek piece on “A Day in the Life of Joe Biden” (HTML title: “Joe Biden, White House Truth Teller”):

Joe Biden had a question. During a long Sunday meeting with President Obama and top national-security advisers on Sept. 13, the VP interjected, “Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?” Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. “And how much will we spend on Pakistan?” Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. “Well, by my calculations that’s a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we’re spending in Pakistan, we’re spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?” The White House Situation Room fell silent. But the questions had their desired effect: those gathered began putting more thought into Pakistan as the key theater in the region.

As I explain in my New Atlanticist essay “Strategic Balance in AfPak,” Biden’s got a point.

AP Photo

Sam Stein reports that “Democrats are bracing themselves for a new line of conservative attack against a provision in the health care legislation once considered so non-controversial that it was endorsed by several major Republican officials.”  What is it, you might ask, that these dastardly Republicans are opposing out of their racist hatred of Barack Obama?

On Tuesday, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) described the health care legislation being considered by the Senate Finance Committee as a “stunning assault on liberty” due to a provision that would require individuals to buy insurance.  Earlier in the week, the individual mandate also came under attack when Tim Phillips, who heads Americans for Prosperity, described it as an assault on individual liberty. “When you have health care, that’s a choice that impacts yourself,” Phillips told MSNBC’s Hardball. “Drivers’ insurance impacts other drivers you may have accidents with.”

The attacks have confounded Democrats in and out of government, who noted quickly that mandating coverage was, until recently, a relative given when it came to health care reform.  “It’s f–ing ludicrous,” said one health care reform activist, who noted that when Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) asked committee members to air their disagreements with an individual mandate during a meeting on May 5, no one chimed in.

Indeed, for months it was presumed that a relatively ironclad deal was in place: in exchange for the government mandating coverage, private insurance companies would agree to cover individuals with pre-existing conditions. The arrangement was all but blessed by prominent figures from within the GOP ranks. In mid-August, the ranking member of the finance committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), announced that the way to get universal coverage is “through an individual mandate.” “That’s individual responsibility,” the senator told Nightly Business Report. “And even Republicans believe in individual responsibility.”

So, Chuck Grassley and at least six other Republicans currently in the Senate support — or at least are willing to sign off on –  a law forcing Americans to buy health insurance.  But that hardly renders it “non-controversial.”

Indeed, this provision was incredibly controversial during last year’s Democratic presidential primaries.   Indeed, only John Edwards and Hillary Clinton supported mandates.  Among those opposing?  Barack Obama and Joe Biden who, as some will recall, went on to win the presidential and vice-presidential nominations, respectively, of the Democratic Party and go on to win election to those offices.

John Judis for The New Republic in June 2007:

Obama’s health care plan, which he announced last week, has been widely criticized by liberals for not making health insurance mandatory. Challenged by Edwards, Obama explained why a mandate is not a cure-all. “If you look at auto insurance, in California there’s mandatory auto insurance,” Obama explained. “Twenty-five percent of the folks don’t have it. The reason is because they can’t afford it. So John and I, we’re not that different in this sense; that I’m committed to starting the process. Everybody who wants it can buy it and it’s affordable. If we have some gaps remaining, we will work on that. You take it from the opposite direction, but you’re still going to have some folks who aren’t insured under your plan, John, because some of them will simply not be able to afford to buy the coverage they’re offered.”

Ron Chusid summarizes the intra-liberal debate on the subject in Liberal Values, February 2008

Paul Krugman continues his vendetta against Barack Obama’s health care plan due to its lack of mandates. The consequence of lacking mandates is unclear as nobody knows for sure how many people would still go without insurance if it was affordable but voluntary, and nobody really knows for sure how many people would remain uninsured despite mandates. It does seem reasonable to assume that achieving near one hundred percent compliance with a mandate would require yet another new bureaucracy and the expenditure of funds which might better be used for actual health care.

There are a variety of views as to whose plan would really insure more people. Robert Reich has argued that more people would wind up being covered under Obama’s plan than Clinton’s.

[...]

Using mandates to achieve universal coverage seems like quite a cop out to me. Regardless of whether the plan is good or the plan stinks, universal coverage is achieved because the government forces you to join up. In contrast Obama takes on the challenge of offering a plan so good that virtually everyone will want to participate to receive health coverage. There is also a clear philosophical difference here in that Obama isn’t obsessed with having every single person sign up. In contrast, a self-proclaimed government junkie like Hillary Clinton just can not live with the fact that somewhere, someone decides they do not want her help. Clinton will help them whether they want her to or not.

I know Clinton supporters will scream that I’m using right wing frames here, but again I must point out that freedom and choice should be considered virtues, not right wing frames. Liberty is what liberalism is ultimately all about, which explains whey Clinton prefers to label herself a progressive and not a liberal.

Some on the far left claim that Democrats lose when these alleged right wing frames about freedom are employed. They got it all wrong. Democrats lose when they concede traditional liberal values such as liberty to the right. If an election is framed so that one side is allowed to be defined as the party of freedom, that party will win virtually every time. Democrats have lost so many elections not because of using right wing frames, but because of conceding values such as freedom to conservatives, even though conservatives talk about freedom without really supporting it.

Ryan Lizza explains why Biden agreed to be Obama’s running mate for The New Yorker in October 2008:

Biden was impressed that Obama’s proposals seemed to be written with an eye toward passage in Congress. (For instance, the lack of a mandate in Obama’s health-care proposal could make the idea more palatable to Republicans.) During the primaries, Biden often played the role of policy grownup, the candidate who liked to chide the unrealistic plans of his rivals.

On July 17th, PoliFact’s Truth-o-Meter awards Obama a full-on flip flop on the issue:

Walk back with us through the mists of time to early 2008, and you might remember then-candidate Barack Obama defending the rights of hard-working people so they would not be forced to buy health insurance.

Obama’s position was different from his two nearest rivals, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, who included mandates for individuals to buy health insurance in their plans for reform. It was an issue that got downright contentious on the campaign trail.

At a debate in South Carolina, Edwards said Obama’s plan really wasn’t universal health care, since it didn’t have a mandate to ensure everyone was covered.

Obama replied that his plan was universal (a claim we rated Barely True ) and explained why he was against a mandate: “A mandate means that in some fashion, everybody will be forced to buy health insurance. … But I believe the problem is not that folks are trying to avoid getting health care. The problem is they can’t afford it. And that’s why my plan emphasizes lowering costs.”

Obama said at the time it was possible some people would refuse to buy health care under his plan.

“It’s true that some people could game the system by just waiting till they get sick and then they show up,” Obama said. “But keep in mind that my plan also says children will be able to stay on their parents’ plan up until the age of 25. And so I don’t believe that there are a whole bunch of folks out there that will not get coverage. And John, both you and Hillary have a hardship exemption where, if people can’t afford to buy health care, you exempt them so that you sort of don’t count them.”

Now, I don’t much care about the flip-flop.  The debate has moved over the past two years, as has the political make-up of the Congress.  Obama may well have been legitimately persuaded that his best chance of getting what he wants it to accede to a mandate.

But let’s not rewrite history, either.  Forcing Americans to buy health insurance regardless of whether they want it or can afford it is extremely controversial, with not only Republicans but most of the Democratic contenders for the presidency in 2008 opposing it.

UPDATE: Headline of the Day honors go to Bill Quick for “Mandating Change Without Hope.”

Vice President Joe Biden told a partisan crowd that, if the Republicans win the House back in 2010, it would be “the end of the road for what Barack and I are trying to do.”  Karen Travers for ABC:

Biden said Republicans are pinning their political strategy on flipping these seats. “If they take them back, this the end of the road for what Barack and I are trying to do,” the vice president said at a fundraiser for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) today in Greenville, Delaware.

Republicans need to pick up 40 seats next November to take back control of the House. There are 49 seats currently held by Democrats in districts that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) won in last year’s presidential election.

Biden said these House seats are Republicans “one shot” at breaking the Obama administration’s agenda. But if Democrats can hold on to those seats, “the dam is going to break,” he said, and a new era of bipartisanship will begin. “All the hidden Republicans that don’t have the courage to vote the way they want to vote because of pressure from the party … it will break the dam and you will see bipartisanship,” Biden said.

Republicans welcomed the vice president’s assessment of the 2010 landscape. “What didn’t seem possible just a few months ago, appears to be the topic of conversation even within the upper echelons of the Obama White House,” said Ken Spain, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “It is interesting to hear Vice President Biden admit that the administration’s effort to double down on a partisan agenda of government takeovers could possibly mean the ‘end of the road’ for their political viability.”

While Biden’s statement is being portrayed as controversial, it’s axiomatic.  Unlikely as it is to happen, a Republican landslide wouldn’t so much be “the end of the road” as the Dead End sign one sees upon arrival.  While I expect the GOP to win back a substantial number of those seats — they’re low hanging fruit, ideologically disposed to vote Republican, not going to have Obama’s coattails helping the Democratic GOTV effort, and it’s traditional for the president’s party to lose seats in the midterms, anyway — it’s almost inconceivable that they’ll take them all back, much less win 40 seats and reverse their losses in the last two cycles.  But, if they did, it would be an indication of massive existing dissatisfaction with the direction Obama is leading the country.

As to the business about Republicans afraid to vote their mind, I’m rather dubious. While the party leadership holds a lot of power in terms of committee assignments and the ability to get one’s bill up for consideration and offer amendments, most Members are more afraid of their constituents.  If they think voting for Obama’s programs is going to get them defeated, they’ll oppose regardless of their conscience.  But it’s hard to imagine a Republican Member who, upon the GOP picking up only 25 seats in the midterms, will suddenly decide he likes liberal policies after all.

Andrew Sullivan writes that “No Recognition Of Ahmadinejad” must be considered “the first and absolute requirement of all Western governments.”

In my New Atlanticist post “Negotiating with Iran without Preconditions,” I recall this famous exchange from the July 24, 2007 CNN/YouTube debate:

More commentary and analysis at the link.

Over at New Atlanticist, I’ve published my thoughts on this weekend’s Iranian election mess in two separate posts: Iran’s Elections: What We Know (And What We Don’t) and Iran’s Elections: What Now?

The short answers:  “Not a whole hell of a lot” and “The same thing we do every day, Pinky.”

I’m reasonably sure that the elections were stolen. Indeed, I’m not convinced that the regime even bothered to count the vote. But, like my colleague Dave Schuler, I considered the elections a sham from the get-go.  For that matter, I thought Iran’s elections were a sham four years ago.

I feel for those poor kids in all the photos, videos, and Tweets Andrew Sullivan has posted over the last three days.  At the end of the day, though, Joe Biden is right: “Talks with Iran are not a reward for good behavior.  Our interests are the same before the election as after … and that is we want them to cease and desist from seeking a nuclear weapon and having one in its possession and secondly to stop supporting terror.”

Our interests in the region are unchanged.  So, for that matter, are the Iranian regime’s. All that’s different now is that any Western notions that they’re dealing with a democratic regime have been dashed. To the extent that our negotiators harbored such illusions, this weekend’s rude awakening is a necessary dose of reality.

Much more at the links.

Photo: Reuters Pictures.

Vice President Joe Biden has a bit of a mouth problem, he just can’t shut it, and whatever he thinks tends to come tumbling out. In this case, while speaking before a Law Enforcement group Vice President Biden told the cops present that “Sotomayor has your back”.

Vice President Joe Biden may have crossed the line when he assured national law enforcement groups Monday that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor “has your back.”

The remark quickly stirred criticism in the legal world, since Biden was making a pledge that a fair and objective justice would not necessarily be able to keep.

Biden made the remark at an assembly of eight law enforcement groups after he detailed Sotomayor’s tough-on-crime record in the courtroom.

“There’s a part of her record that seems to be, up to now, been flying under the radar a bit. And that’s her tough stance on criminals and her unyielding commitment to finding justice for the victims of crime,” Biden said.

He then repeatedly said, “She gets it,” and sought to assure the law enforcement groups that she would be on their side.

“So you all are on the front lines. But as you do your job, know that Judge Sotomayor has your back as well,” Biden said. “And throughout this nomination process, I know you’ll have her back.”

In other words, Biden is blabbering on that Sotomayor will go into cases involving the police and civil liberties with a bias in favor of the police. And this is supposed to be a guy from the liberal party?

The problem is that a truly objective judge should go into all cases without a preference for either side. Now the question is, is Biden just shooting his mouth off like a boob, or is he basing this on something? If it is the latter then Sotomayor may not be such a good candidate.

Here is another case where Sotomayor signed on to put procedure ahead of a man’s innocence. Her decision helped ensure that an innocent man spent another 6 years in prison.

Jeffrey Deskovic heard a TV talk show host announce President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court last month, and his mind raced. That name; he remembered that name.

He emerged from bed and riffled through the boxes of motions, appeals and letters he had accumulated in the 16 years he spent in a New York prison for a rape and murder he did not commit.

And there it was, a ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, dated April 26, 2000, and barely two pages long. It was co-written by Sonia Sotomayor.

“We have considered all of petitioner-appellant’s arguments and find them to be without merit,” the ruling said.

Imprisoned at the age of 16 for the killing of a high school classmate, Mr. Deskovic, now 35, filed a habeas corpus petition in 1997 in Federal District Court contesting his conviction. The court denied the request because the paperwork had arrived four days late. Mr. Deskovic and one of his lawyers — who he said had been misinformed about the deadline for filing — appealed the decision to the federal appellate court on which Ms. Sotomayor sat.

Ms. Sotomayor, along with the other judge on the panel, ruled that the lawyer’s mistake did not “rise to the level of an extraordinary circumstance” that would compel them to forgive the delay. There was no need to look at the evidence that Mr. Deskovic insisted would affirm his innocence, they said.

Mr. Deskovic spent six more years behind bars, until DNA found in the victim not only cleared him, but connected another man to the crime.

And this article in the L.A. Times is not encouraging either.

In 1999, Sotomayor upheld the crack cocaine conviction of a New York man despite what she called a “mistaken arrest.” Last year, Sotomayor spoke for a 2-1 majority that upheld a man’s child pornography conviction, even though she agreed an FBI agent did not have probable cause to search his computer.

“I think her experience as a prosecutor balances out her liberal tendencies,” said New York University law professor Kenji Yoshino.

[...]

Gerald Lefcourt, a high- profile criminal defense lawyer in New York, appeared before Sotomayor while she was a federal district court judge. “She always seemed to be leaning toward the government — not outrageously so, but if you look at a lot of her criminal law cases you can see she’s pretty conservative,” he said.

Lefcourt wasn’t surprised. He had faced off against Sotomayor when she was an assistant district attorney.

Sotomayor was “very police-like,” he said. “Dismissive of what the defendant had to say about anything.”

I have to say, it seems like Biden isn’t just shooting his mouth off here. Sotomayor does seem to have a bias in favor of law enforcement.

“They told me that if I voted for McCain we’d have we’d have a buffoon for a Vice President. And they were right!” – Tom Maguire

The “They told me that if I voted for McCain …” gag has managed to go on quite a long time already (by Internet standards) without getting old.

Rebecca Frankel collects Joe Biden’s Top Five Political Gaffes, which make for an amusing list.  She rightly gives top honors to Biden’s comments on swine flu.

In case you missed it (I’m catching up a bit myself), Biden said this Thursday morning:

Appearing on NBC’s “Today Show,” Biden said he has already advised his family to avoid traveling in small spaces. “I would tell members of my family, and I have, I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places right now,” he said. “It’s not that its going to Mexico, its that you are in a confined aircraft when one person sneezes, it goes everywhere through the aircraft. That’s me.”

“I would not be at this point, if they had another way of transportation, suggesting they ride the subway,” the vice president went on. “From my perspective, it relates to is mitigation. If you’re out in the middle of a field and someone sneezes that’s one thing. If you’re in a closed aircraft, a closed container, closed car, a closed classroom, it’s a different thing.”

In fairness, Biden walked this back substantially later in the day.

Says Frankel:

But this latest foot-in-the-mouth, did-he-really-say-that-out-loud comment he made yesterday on NBC’s Today Show was worse than a gaffe. It was a serious misstep in leadership. The hysteria and fear gripping the American public is no laughing matter, and those in a position of influence must chose their words — not to mention their tone, and their demeanor — very carefully.

In his 100-day speech, President Obama used analogies with horses and barns, reassuring folks there was no need to be alarmed. This was good. Joe Biden telling folks that he doesn’t want his loved ones in confined spaces like planes, trains, and classrooms, was the opposite of good. It was bad.

Indeed.   The thing is, pretty much all of Biden’s greatest hits are defendable.  Indeed, I’ve defended him on most of them.   Obama is clean, bright, and articulate and Obama himself obviously rightly regarded Biden’s comment as an awkwardly delivered high compliment.   Biden’s “you cannot enter a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have an Indian accent” was silly but based on something so widely regarded as true that it has been a staple of our pop culture for a generation.

And, frankly, I’ve said the same thing about swine flu and airplanes in private conversation as Biden.  Indeed, we’ve canceled a family vacation to Mexico and have decided to instead go on a road trip because we don’t want to risk exposing a 4-month-old to the virus.  (And, yes, I realize that the probabilities point to driving being more dangerous.)

But Frankel’s right: Senior public officials saying these things simply has a different impact than an ordinary Joe.

Glenn Reynolds points to a story in a local Chester County, PA paper titled “Breeder Regrets Dog Sale to Biden.”  I clicked the link, expecting to find a story about Biden neglecting the pooch because he’s too busy doing whatever it is that vice presidents do.

Instead, it’s a tale of what a royal pain in the ass it is to do business with a high profile government official.

After the story about the puppy sale ran in the newspapers and on TV newscasts, three dog wardens from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture showed up on Brown’s doorstep for a kennel inspection. And they showed up again and again for four visits over four months.

She said she has also received death threats from animal activists against her and Biden, which were reported to the Secret Service and the FBI. Bob Slama, special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Philadelphia field office, said the agency “cannot comment on an ongoing investigation.”  J.J. Klaver, special agent at the Philadelphia field office of the FBI, said his agency is not investigating the matter at this time.

“I thought when Joe Biden bought a puppy from me, what an honor,” Brown said. “Out of millions of breeders in the country, in the world, he picked me.” The glow dimmed almost immediately. Following a story about Brown and Biden in the Daily Local News, readers posted 131 comments, some chiding Biden for having the Secret Service with him when he went puppy shopping and others complaining he did not get the dog from a shelter.

And then PETA got involved . . . .

The Internet has turned virtually everyone into a potential public figure.  Ten years ago, she might have gotten a few nasty letters or a couple of crank calls from people who read about the story in the local paper.  Nowadays, though, hyper-local stories can be nationalized and acted upon by activist groups.

Townhall’s Greg Hengler seems pleased to have caught Vice President Biden in a contradiction of the Obama administration’s new verbal policy eschewing the phrase “Global War on Terror.”  Hengler quips, “Maybe Biden just forgot the phrase ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.’”

Others reacting to this and aggregated at memeorandum seem to have watched said video and come away with the same conclusion.  Ed Morrissey, for example, writes, “CNN tried getting VP Biden to explain this, and while not accusing CNN of making it up, clearly he couldn’t believe anyone would be this stupid.”

It’s pretty clear to me that what Biden’s saying is that “Global War on Terror” was problematic because it treated a series of discrete problems as if they were one and the same — implying that the same tactics should be used to address all of them — and that the new team wanted to signal a clean break in policy. Now, I don’t happen to believe that the Obama policy is much of a change from the Bush policy; rather, it’s a break from the Bush policy circa 2004 and its subsequent caricaturization. But I sympathize with the desire to shed whatever baggage the old phrase carries.

I don’t, however, think “overseas contingency operations” will supplant “war on terror” in the popular lexicon.  We’re likely stuck with the phrase in that the media and academics need some sort of unifying phrase to describe a series of problems that, while different, are part of one larger fight.  Just as “post-Cold War era” stuck with us far longer than was useful because we didn’t have anything else to call it, we’ll likely have a “Global War on Terror” whether Team Obama wants it or not.

Timothy Sandefur is embarrassed:

So I was watching this insane video of Christopher Hitchens and Salman Rushdie discussing the War on Terrorism with Mos Def. And it’s amusing to laugh at the utterly hapless ignorance of “Mr. Def,” as he is repeatedly called—until you stop and wonder. Why is the black community not outraged by this? Bill Maher hosts a talk show to discuss the threat of Islamic terrorism and the Middle East, and he invites two world-renowned white male intellectuals and Mos Def? If this show had been choreographed by the Ku Klux Klan it could not have been more infuriating. Did Maher not have the phone number of a black intellectual? Were Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Orlando Patterson, Julian Bond, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter all busy?

Here’s the video:

While I agree entirely that this is an absurd pairing, it’s most definitely not a racist one.  Sandefur has apparently never seen “Real Time with Bill Maher.”  The premise of the show, from its inception more than six years ago, has been to pair politicos and pop culture figures in discussion.  (Whether the point of the exercise was to demonstrate that the latter are morons or that their opinions are equally valid, I could never determine.)

Here are the seven season openers.

February 21, 2003. Guests: Author Ann Coulter, actor Larry Miller, writer, radio host and professor Michael Eric Dyson, comedian Sarah Silverman, comedian Chris Rock.  Topics: The UN, Affirmative Action.

January 16, 2004. Guests: Ret. Gen. Wesley Clark, artist Moby, Rev. Al Sharpton, actor Ron Silver, Rep. Darrell Issa. Topics: American values, Iraq, MoveOn.org, environment.

February 18, 2005. Guests: Correspondent Lesley Stahl, actor Robin Williams, former H&HS Sec. Tommy Thompson, Sen. Joe Biden, and actor Don Cheadle. Topics: On protecting sources, Jeff Gannon, on Interrogating prisoners, Iraq elections, Darfur.

February 17, 2006. Guests: Sen. Russ Feingold, commentator Fred Barnes, actor Eddie Griffin, reporter Helen Thomas, Iraq advisor Dan Senor. Topics: Cheney shooting, on the Patriot Act, Bush, Mohammad cartoons.

February 16, 2007. Guests: Fmr Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, fmr Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, TV host Craig Ferguson; via satellite, fmr Sen. John Edwards and basketball player John Amaechi. Topics: Developments in North Korea, Iran, and Iraq; global warming; Mitt Romney and Mormonism; Al Franken Senate campaign.

January 11, 2008. Guests: Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, fmr Court TV anchor Catherine Crier, fmr Bush Press Secy Tony Snow, Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi (election correspondent); via satellite, humorist P.J. O’Rourke. Topics: New Hampshire primary, electronic voting machines, Iraq troop surge, subprime lending and prospects for economic recession.

February 20, 2009. Guests: Financial Times editor Chrystia Freeland, journalist Tina Brown, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA); via satellite, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), journalist Brigitte Gabriel The economy, President Obama’s first month in office.

See the Wikipedia episode guide if you fear the season openers are not representative.

The pairings are, in most if not all cases, patently absurd. They include plenty of famous white guys who would, on the face of things, seem to be woefully out of their elements and plenty of black guys who would seemingly mop of the floor with the competition.

For what it’s worth, Mr. Def was really good in this week’s “House.”

The string of U.S. vice presidents caught saying the F-word on Capitol Hill now stands at two:

Joe Biden dropped a big F-bomb into a live mic at an event on Friday afternoon.

“Gimme a f–ing break,” the vice president said after a former Senate colleague referred to him as “Mr. Vice President.”

Biden was at Union Station in Washington, D.C. to announce $1.3 billion in stimulus money to expand passenger rail capacity.

The obvious comparison is Dick Cheney’s “frank exchange of views” with Pat Leahy in June 2004.  It’s not quite the same, of course, in that Cheney’s utterance was angry and insulting while Biden’s was good humored and self-deprecating.  And Union Station is one-minute Metro ride or five minute walk from the Capitol building.

In addition to quite a bit of outrage from the likely suspects, the Cheney incident spurred an eloquent defense of the F-word from, of all people, Charles Krauthammer that included a handy dandy guide to the variations and formulations and the occasions to which they’re most suited.  Interestingly, the Army’s first successful F-bomb test happened three years later.