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The economics of Joseph Biden
Here are his votes on trade issues. They could be better, noting that this is unlikely to be his major function. Cato gives him 42 percent on trade issues, noting that he once wanted to ban all toy imports from China. Here is Biden on budget issues; more conservative than I would have thought. Here is Biden on internet issues. David Brooks offered an interesting personal portrait of the man:
Honesty. Biden’s most notorious feature is his mouth. But in his youth, he had a stutter. As a freshman in high school he was exempted from public speaking because of his disability, and was ridiculed by teachers and peers. His nickname was Dash, because of his inability to finish a sentence.
He developed an odd smile as a way to relax his facial muscles (it still shows up while he’s speaking today) and he’s spent his adulthood making up for any comments that may have gone unmade during his youth.
Today, Biden’s conversational style is tiresome to some, but it has one outstanding feature. He is direct. No matter who you are, he tells you exactly what he thinks, before he tells it to you a second, third and fourth time.
Maybe he would have done well in academia.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 23, 2008 at 08:18 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
Biden — the perfect foil for Palin!
Posted by: Ted at Aug 23, 2008 8:21:09 AM
Biden is the Dems equivalent of Giuliani, but even more loathsome. He's an ultra Hawk and a champion of the nanny state, and generally a jerk, even more so than the average politician.
Of course, everyone remembers his lying. Why Delaware keeps reelecting this bidenizing bidenizer is a mystery.
BI-den, n. to lie, to prevaricate, to bidenize.
Posted by: Bill Stepp at Aug 23, 2008 8:44:52 AM
A record of 42% says very little, because Cato does take into account his voting record on international IP (things like TRIPS...). Intellectual property rights, after all, are barriers to trade, maybe even more important than tariffs. If you take Biden's views about IP into account his voting record may well be minus 42%.
Posted by: ivan at Aug 23, 2008 9:00:13 AM
"He is direct". Please read this
During the 2006 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, the Post's Dana Milbank wrote this of Biden's performance:
"Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., in his first 12 minutes of questioning the nominee, managed to get off only one question. Instead, during his 30-minute round of questioning, Biden spoke about his own Irish American roots, his "Grandfather Finnegan," his son's application to Princeton (he attended the University of Pennsylvania instead, Biden said), a speech the senator gave on the Princeton campus, the fact that Biden is "not a Princeton fan," and his views on the eyeglasses of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)."
Yes. He should have been a professor. The question is where.
Posted by: E. Barandiaran at Aug 23, 2008 9:00:41 AM
"Maybe he would have done well in academia..."
Nah... over at Volokh, they're already savaging his academic record...
Posted by: CFG in IL at Aug 23, 2008 9:57:59 AM
Maybe he would have done well in academia.
"I think I have a much higher I.Q. than you do." - Joe Biden
Yup, perfect for academia.
Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Aug 23, 2008 10:07:08 AM
We need all our legislators to talk more and do less.
Posted by: jimbino at Aug 23, 2008 11:02:15 AM
"They could be better"
should be changed to
"This man doesn't want anymore free trade than we already do!"
I think this Biden quote is relevant:
"I don't think we should be talking about protectionism. I think we should be talking about fair trade, balanced trade. And you got to be able to, in order to be able to have reasonable trade agreements, you've got to have some labor standards and some environmental standards or it's just a race to the bottom."
However, based on what little I have read and heard, I can say that I like his China policy, and find his Iraq policy a bit naive.
Posted by: Robert Olson at Aug 23, 2008 12:37:33 PM
New Republic profile of Biden.
Biden on the Patriot Act: "I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up was my bill."
He authored the RAVE Act, and has in general been one of the most committed drug warriors in the Democratic Party.
He's very pro-Amtrak.
There's the plagiarism thing, and then "I think I have a higher IQ than you," and the claiming that he finished in the top half of his law class, etc. when he really finished 75th out of 85 or so.
Posted by: John Thacker at Aug 23, 2008 12:56:45 PM
Biden finished 76th in his third-tier law school class of about 85. If there is some correlation between doing well as a student and doing well as a professional academic, then Biden would fail miserably in academia.
Posted by: Eli at Aug 23, 2008 1:57:43 PM
Ugh, has anyone seen his stance on gun control?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9aIb-IplqY
Posted by: nerdboy at Aug 23, 2008 8:33:38 PM
So, how does he compare to DICK CHENEY?
Is Biden scarier than Cheney?
HC
Posted by: Happy Camper at Aug 23, 2008 8:50:30 PM
I realize this was to be an economics topic, but I don't understand the comment that Biden's Iraq policy is "naive." Quite the reverse. It seems to me that, like his friend Richard Lugar and the rest of the foreign policy establishment (except for the neocons,) Biden has been pretty much right on the money.
The surge reduced violence, sure, but the stated goal of political reconciliation isn't happening, which was Petraeus' fear too. It would seem that some of the congressional Democrats foresaw this likelihood in the beginning of 2007, when they opposed the surge as more or less a diversion.
To be sure, some lives were saved by the division of neighborhoods and the aid to the Sunni Awakenings. That's to the good.
But at this time, all we have in return for it is that the fundamentalist Shi'ites are curiously quiescent, the plans for regional elections are on hold, and the Baghdad government wants to arrest leaders of the Sunni Awakenings -- pushing some of them perhaps to move toward al Qaeda.
So anybody who thinks the surge "worked" ought to explain what the U.S. must do next, to prevent Iraq from having a freely-elected, anti-Western Shi'ite government. Unfortunately, this is the same outcome that has been most probable all along.
And as I understand him, this has been Biden's view all along (as well as that of most foreign policy experts.) He wasn't the first person to mention the break-up of Iraq to protect the other tribes, and we may yet see it happen.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Aug 23, 2008 10:09:00 PM
The Cato Trade Votes Web site (http://www.freetrade.org/congress?senator=8) scores Senators on the basis of their votes opposing trade barriers and subsidies. Scores range from 0 (never opposed) to 100% (always opposed). The site gives Biden "career" scores of 50% on trade barriers and 27% on subsidies. These "career" rankings only cover votes since 1997 and Biden has been in Congress since 1972. While Biden's career trade barrier score is middling, it masks a decline from the 105th to the 110th Congress. In the 105th Congress (1997-98) he scored 100%, while in the 110th (2007-2008) he scored 0%. In general the scores drop as the Congresses pass.
Posted by: Ben Muse at Aug 24, 2008 1:07:56 AM
Maybe he would have done well in academia.are you talking about Dan Quayle ?
Posted by: k at Aug 24, 2008 11:14:11 AM
He wasn't the first person to mention the break-up of Iraq to protect the other tribes, and we may yet see it happen.
We may, and I admit that I've been intrigued by the idea. But the representatives of all the groups in Iraq, including the minority ones, strongly oppose the idea. Iraqi response to the Biden pick was negative across the spectrum for that reason.
While everyone agrees that political reconciliation is necessary, it does seem to me that a reduction in violence is a necessary precondition for that, so it's difficult for me to see how the surge was simply a diversion from that. Not sufficient, surely, but not a diversion.
It's difficult to force political reconciliation by any means, and partition is not exactly easy even if all the political leaders of the country being partitioned are behind it. The partition of India resulted in a lot of tragedies and loss of life. (Control of Mosul itself could easily spark the same sort of tensions as Kashmir, for that matter.)
In this case, the proposal for a partition was even more of a diversion because the people of Iraq apparently will not accept it, at least not yet.
Posted by: John Thacker at Aug 24, 2008 2:50:40 PM
"the representatives of all the groups in Iraq, including the minority ones, strongly oppose the idea" Ask yourself why -- and if it's the same reason in every case. That Reuters article you linked quotes a Sunni (no surprise there, the minority doesn't want to get shut out with nothing,) a secular Shi'ite connected to Allawi, and a Kurd who in fact is NOT opposed to autonomous regions, just to forming them on a sectarian as opposed to geographic basis. (No surprise there either.) That is not agreement "across the spectrum."
The same treatment should be applied to the phrase "everyone agrees that political reconciliation is necessary." Perhaps this should be rewritten "everyone agrees this is what is reported in the U.S. media." No one is going to declare open war if it means a surer loss of lands that you might otherwise control at the end -- and if it is easier to smile while plunging the knife.
Just yesterday the N.Y. times reported "Fear Keeps Iraqis Out of Their Baghdad Homes." Only 7,000 out of over 150,000 are willing to take the chance of return. And that is in a city where the U.S. is keeping the peace. The U.S. will have to stay there for several generations to make this work. And so get used and misused by one side or the other in that long process.
About the only thing going for peace are Shi'ite seculars somehow without hatred after their relatives' being smashed by the Sunnis for decades under Saddam -- on top of an age-old sectarian hatred. (Well, there must be one or two Iraqi peaceniks out there somewhere!) And the other thing going for peace is Sistani -- but he is old, and what's coming after is not necessarily a pro-Western outlook. Then the next question is: can those seculars dominate in free elections if all the fundamentalist Shi'ites participate? An affirmative answer appears to be in doubt.
For this U.S. presidential election, the question had been whether the voters would continue their wishful thinking and affirm McCain's pledge to stay there for a hundred years. I write "had been," because the Administration is close to a withdrawal deal, thereby saving McCain from his foolish gung-ho-ism -- although that deal comes in support of the Democrats' (and Biden's) contention that pulling-out may force some Iraqis to think a little harder about peace. But even that contention is really just a guess. History may decide that the surge was a diversion from the inevitable.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Aug 24, 2008 5:43:13 PM
I thought academics usually took a strong stance against plagiarism.
Posted by: Ted Craig at Aug 25, 2008 10:24:39 AM
Biden is a career politician, whose sons have profited mightily from their surname.
Sounds pretty conventional to me.
The fact that he stuttered as youth means he'll tolerant
Obama's constant "uhh", "uhh", "uhh".
Other than that, with the voting record, arrogance,
lack of real life work experience,
he's a perfect for for Obama.
The only question is who'll pay for all of the carbon offsets to mitigate the amount
of bovine excrement this guys vomit up?
Posted by: Superheater at Aug 25, 2008 12:57:45 PM
So when Biden (and others) say: "Every new trade agreement should have built into it what we all talk about. Environmental standards and labor standards," I would prefer to know exactly what environmental and labor standards he is talking about, and how far he would like to take it (up the trading partner's minimum wage to $3/hour? or what?)
Sometimes this talk is just silly though, look at NAFTA. Regarding "labor standards," difficulty in Hiring/Firing workers are HIGHER in Canada and Mexico than the US. Canada has a higher minimum wage than the US. On the environmental side, the US emits far more CO2 than either of those two countries.
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