It's so good, that he remembers things that didn't happen:
...I think Joe Biden's constant flights of fancy indicate he's not a terribly precise thinker or speaker, and he's certainly not used to being called out on these, or being corrected. He takes in data and remembers what he wants to remember, not the facts as they actually are.
(More on this list - he keeps insisting that his wife and daughter were killed by a drunk driver when the driver in question was sober; he keeps saying he was a coal miner when his grandfather was; he says the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said we're losing the war in Iraq (he said we were "not winning" in Afghanistan)... )
I know we're supposed to be worried about whether Sarah Palin is ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, but I really wonder what kind of diplomatic crises could be triggered by a globetrotting vice president who kept talking about events that didn't happen...
I don't think that Biden's IQ is as high as he thinks it is.
And I agree that this is one gaffe that's really going to hurt him. I expect it will be featured in a lot of McCain ads in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
[Update a few minutes later]
Victor Davis Hanson makes a good point:
In short, the problem is not whether we think the affable Biden's latest slip/goof/outrage is important, but whether we think anything he says any more is important. The next time he tries to offer something serious, from the AIG matter and coal power to campaign ads and Sarah Palin, I think we are at the point where most will smile, ignore him, and think 'That's just Biden being Biden.' He could give the Gettyburg Address tomorrow, and the public wouldn't know whether he wrote it, whether he was going to retract it, whether it was true, or whether he was serious.
I haven't taken Joe Biden seriously in years. Actually, I can't recall a time that I ever did.
I am, on the other hand, taking Sarah Palin very seriously. Especially when she says stuff like this:
It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where where do they go? It's Alaska.
Rand, I know you think highly of her, so could you decipher this cryptic statement? It sounds like the apocalypse: like she merged Foreign Policy and the Book of Revelation. Anyway, your thoughts please?
Mike,
Are you trying to suggest that Russia buzzing our aircraft carriers, invading our airspace with their most advanced nuclear bomber or boasting about being undetected in our airspace are not serious issues?
Mike Gerson, she's probably trying to indirectly allude to the fact that Alaska has a huge chunk of NORAD installations, and that the sort of international game of chicken that went horribly wrong here takes place all the time near Alaska.
Inasmuch as some of that involves Alaskan Air National Guard, and in any event takes place in and near Alaskan air space, the governor has to be in the national security loop at some level. I don't doubt that to the extent she is, she isn't allowed to talk about it, not in any direct way, so this may be her way of prodding her interlocutor to realize that Alaska is the only state of the Union that actually directly faces Russia, and has had a major role in forward national air defence since the Cold War.
Palin is not likely to have any serious decision-making role in national security, of course, although she probably has plenty of decisions to make about logistics and support, but her point is that she is hardly as ignorant on this issue as...well, for example, the junior Senator from a state square in the middle of the continent, about 1500 miles from the nearest Russian warplane.