I've met Joe Biden a couple times, including once almost ten years ago to the day when he and his staff very generously spent the better part of three hours with a college senior who wasn't quite sure what to do with himself. His father and my grandfather were close friends, which is why I was able to sit down with him, but he was truly gracious, funny and insightful as I tried to figure out what I wanted to do with my working life. The meeting cemented the good impression I'd gotten from both family stories and Richard Ben Cramer's portrayal of Biden in the classic campaign memoir
What It Takes: very smart guy, sharp and focused, funny, committed.
So I was very sorry to read a few minutes ago that, just a couple weeks after telling Torturer's Apprentice Alberto Gonzales that he "loved him" and was planning to vote for him, Biden today gave Condeliar Rice
more aid and comfort, prefacing his questions with the statement that he would vote for her. He apparently did ask some tough questions, and point out some of the flaws in the policy--but seems to hold Rice harmless for her part in these problems. He even expressed a view that, to me, sounds just amazingly naive:
"Mr. Biden, who was first elected to the Senate in 1972, as the United States was extricating itself from Vietnam, said he hoped Ms. Rice would be a voice for greater candor from the administration on the Iraq undertaking, in terms of how many troops will ultimately be needed, and for how long."
"Greater candor"? From Rice? Perhaps I'm overreacting to a typical showing of inside-the-Beltway courtesy, but this is someone who seems incapable of not just candor, but independent thinking. Her virtues are loyalty and courtier skills, and once confirmed--admittedly, a meaningless formality in Occupied Washington--she'll be nothing more than a paper-pusher for the fanatics.
A little more spine from Senator Biden, some sign of recognition of these realities from our party's supposed point person on foreign affairs, would have been appreciated.