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Power, pop, and probings from ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper

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Declare candidacy, open mouth, insert foot

January 31, 2007 2:59 PM

That loquacious chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who launched his presidential campaign today -- Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del. - may be experiencing an ailment not entirely unknown to him: foot in mouth disease.

Biden is today taking some heat for comments he made to the New York Observer, in which he says of a rival for the nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Immediately the conservative media establishment -- Rush Limbaugh, the Drudge Report, bloggers -- publicly pounced for what seemed to many to be insensitive if not racist. And, notably, Obama himself didn't do much to knock the story down.

"You'd have to ask Sen. Clinton, uh, Sen. Biden what he was thinking," Obama said when he was asked about the comments at a press conference this afternoon, initially stumbling by mentioning the name of the Democratic frontrunner for the nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. "I don't spend too much time worrying about what folks are talking about during a campaign season."

When he was asked if Biden meant to be complimentary, Obama said: "I'm not going to parse his words that carefully."

In a conference call just a few minutes ago, Biden said his comments were being misunderstood.

"Barack Obama is probably the most exciting candidate that either the Democratic or Republican party has produced at least since I've been around," Biden said. "He's fresh, he's new, he's insightful."

Biden said he regretted that "some have taken totally out of context my use of the word 'clean.'"

"My mother has an expression 'clean as a whistle, sharp as a tack,'" Biden said. "He's crisp and clear….. Look, the idea is: this guy is something brand new no one has seen before."

Thoughts???

jt

January 31, 2007 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (9)

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But Why use Rush to comment? Why not David Duke?

Posted by: bob kelton | Feb 2, 2007 6:30:03 AM

Biden is such a talker he will have a lot of difficulty avoiding the YouTube reels during his campaign, however short his campaign may last.

Posted by: reyonthehill | Feb 1, 2007 2:20:33 PM

Biden is probably not a credible candidate. It's still too bad that racial issues can't be discussed openly without the danger of words being parsed to find bias, particularly by the likes of Rush. If the sentence is parsed objectively, Biden says Obama has each of the qualities that he's mentioning. That doesn't mean by negative inference that others lacked all of the qualities; just one or more, with the most notable being "mainstream". As for clean, think of all the times that politicians have been refered to as dirty; it has nothing to do with soap and everything to do with skeletons in the closet. People on both sides of the aisle, whether it be political or racial, should encourage honest discourse about racial issues rather than continuing to distort any comments for their own bias or ratings.

Posted by: Eamon | Feb 1, 2007 8:01:13 AM

Perhaps what Senator Biden meant was that Senator Obama buys his soap at the all of the convenience stores owned by Indian and Pakistani immigrants. I am sure that a quick search will produce numerous times when the good senator remarked “Wow is that guy ever clean” when referring to other Americans. Pretty soon he will take up a seat on the “misunderstood joke” train. Strike 2

Posted by: flyover | Jan 31, 2007 8:50:48 PM

I agree "foot in mouth" nothing else -- first the pundits screw up the meaning of the Hillary joke, now this (how old are they and is that all they do is gossip??) --
I would say he probably meant a "Breath of Fresh Air" Hope and Optimism, all things different to Washington insiders -- politicians and pundits alike. I guess I am biased!!

Posted by: Paulet | Jan 31, 2007 6:26:57 PM

As much as I dislike Joe Biden, I doubt he meant to imply anything about the personal hygiene of black Americans. Just a stupid way to phrase his comment.

I am old enough to remember Biden's last presidential run (1992?, not sure) when he plagiarized a quote from a Brit pol (Neil Kinnock, or thereabouts) about being "the first one in his family to attend University."

Last time around, he also got into a debate in NH with a reporter about how intelligent he (Biden) was, despite the fact that he finished near the bottom of his law school class.

I don't think Biden has a prayer. Hillary has the same platform, and she's more clever.

Posted by: Big E | Jan 31, 2007 5:32:09 PM

Biden never had a chance. He'll only get worse, not better, as the days go on. Foot-in-mouth disease is only one of his problems e.g. when will he plagarize his next speech.

Posted by: sophillyfatz | Jan 31, 2007 4:52:35 PM

At best, Sen. Biden's comment about Sen. Obama was thoughtless. But it's what makes Sen. Biden so entertaining to watch: you never know what he's going to say and what trouble he'll get himself into! If this is the beginning of his campaign, he has the potential of being much more entertaining than Sen. Kerry ever was with his doublespeak!

Posted by: chuck | Jan 31, 2007 3:42:09 PM

agreed. Foot in mouth. And for the record, I don't think race factors into the minds of average voters nearly as much as it does the pols and pundits. Maybe I'm giving the country too much credit. Or maybe the pols and pundits give the country too little credit.

Posted by: cordelia525 | Jan 31, 2007 3:07:02 PM

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