Although Biden has not announced whether he might run for his boss’ job in 2016, it seems more than coincidence that his latest dustups occurred on a speaking tour in Iowa, a big pond these days for presidential hopefuls testing the water for 2016.
In a speech last week, he referred to unscrupulous lenders of bad loans to military service members as “Shylocks.” That term, derived from a Jewish character in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” has long been viewed as an ethnic slur.
The next day in Des Moines he referred to Asia as “the Orient.”
Later that day, as reports of his two-in-one-day gaffe-fest streamed out, he made a third. Answering a reporter’s question, he raised the possibility that the United States might commit ground troops, also called “boots on the ground,” and not just airstrikes to fight the Islamic State in Iraq. “We’ll determine that,” he told a reporter, “based on how the effort goes.”
With that, he rhetorically opened a door of military possibilities that the Obama administration has tried mightily to keep shut.
Yet major TV newscasts ignored these controversial eruptions, according to conservative media watchdogs.
I think Biden’s remarks raised hardly a ripple for other reasons that tell us more about his political future, or lack of it. Hillary Clinton has not officially announced her candidacy either, but she obviously is laying the groundwork with a non-campaign campaign, beginning with her recent book tour.
Biden’s importance as a newsmaker, even as a gaffe-maker, is being overshadowed by the air of inevitability surrounding the former secretary of state.
Besides, as gaffes go, Biden’s endless stream tends to reinforce an old media narrative of him as the dotty old uncle whom everybody puts up with because you know he means no harm.
Even in the letter of complaint from Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, about Biden’s Shylock remark, Foxman praised Biden as “friendly to the Jewish community and open and tolerant” as an individual.
As Rebecca Nelson at the National Journal reported, Biden’s approvals have remained remarkably static during his vice presidency, despite more than enough gaffes to fill a “top ten” list on Time’s website.
Media narratives feed on themselves. Since Biden has no record of antipathy toward any group, except maybe some Republicans here and there, his racial-ethnic blunders haven’t had much traction.
Of course, that could change if his presidential aspirations show any chance of becoming reality. For now, however, he appears to be too trapped by his past reputation for shooting from the lip to make his remarks do much more than energize his partisan rivals.
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