By Mark Rhoads
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Once many years ago when Joe Biden was boring his colleagues as he pontificated for thirty minutes about some issue before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a liberal Washington pundit now deceased wrote that "There is no greater love affair in Washington than the love that Sen. Biden has for the sound of his own voice." Joe Biden smirking while Paul Ryan was talking is nothing new. Even past age 70, Biden reverts to form as the same childish egotist who has always shown his disrespect and contempt for anyone who differs in the slightest from his hard Left view of America.
Now this is a matter of style, substance, and character, but if you were writing the cold opening for Saturday Night Live in three days, you know they will portray Biden as laughing and smirking at a calmer Paul Ryan just the way they portrayed Al Gore rolling his eyes and letting out with a heavy sigh every time Bush made a point in the first debate of 2000.
Liberals think that Biden re-energized their hard Left base and that might be true to some extent but Paul Ryan showed he could do the top job with his mastery of the topics and could be an alternative vice president or president.
The instant poll from CBS News showed their viewers said Biden won the debate by a wide margin of almost 20 points but the poll of CNN viewers said that Paul Ryan won by 48 to 44 percent. Even a poll of liberal Huffington Post readers only had Biden ahead of Ryan by one point.
Democratic spinners called the Biden smirk a "smile" from a "happy warrior" for the middle class. They forgot that the original Happy Warrior, Gov. Al Smith of New York, left their party in 1936 when he rejected the socialism of his former pal FDR. Fox News reported mixed reviews on the smile smirk from pundits:
"Biden's smile is out of control," NBC News' David Gregory tweeted.
And Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, added: "SNL will have to devote entire show just to Biden's facial expressions."
Peggy Noonan put the case well when she said that Biden confused aggression and sarcasm toward Ryan for strength and wisdom. But true wisdom does not come from age or long tenure in office alone. it comes from learning from policy mistakes of the past instead of emotionally defending the Left status quo. This was Biden's last hour of his career in the spotlight, and he blew it by being the same Joe Biden he was in 1988--bombastic and arrogant.
The Joe Biden smirk is revealing in this way. Biden does not just have contempt for Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and Republicans in Congress. He often showed the same kind of arrogant contempt for his fellow Democrats in debates when he ran against them for president in the primaries of 1988 and 2008. I think that his contempt for other people will sink in over the next few days as clips of the debate are shown over many times in contrast with the sober and respectful analysis and demeanor of Paul Ryan. Ryan actually looked and behaved in a far more mature and adult fashion than the so-called elder statesman who is 28 years older than Ryan.
For Joe Biden, of all people in public life today, to hammer his opponent on truth telling is a grotesque joke. This is the same Joe Biden who in 1988 got caught red-handed stealing from the biography of British Labor Party Leader Neil Kinnock and passing it off as details from his own life story in Pennsylvania and Delaware! So when Biden turns to the camera and says "who do you trust?' My answer would be not the compulsive egotist who lied even about about his own biography to steal from the leader of the Labor Party in Britain and who got caught.
Biden's childish name calling using words like "malarkey" and "stuff" to interrupt Ryan constantly was never corrected by the moderator. He wanted viewers to think he was superior to Ryan by pretending that every single thing Ryan said was so terrribly funny that Biden just had to laugh at him.
In spite of the CBS instant poll, I think like the lingering smile of the Cheshire Cat in Alice and Wonderland, the Biden smirk will remain in the memory of many voters for many days to come. People are already voting early now in several key states such as Iowa and Ohio. They might even think that for all of Biden's protestations of sympathy for his fellow man, he actually has contempt for voters who are too slow to appreciate his conceited self-important image as a brilliant leader. Even if Joe Biden is shown the door on Nov. 6, do not expect him to ever get over himself. The insecure egotist is who Joe Biden really is.
