He thought he was entitled to be President because
he had the "gift of gab" and that's all it took.
There is a famous video on YouTube from 1988 when Joe Biden ran for President for the first time.
This video is well known because at the very beginning Biden told a series of demonstrable lies about his academic accomplishments at Syracuse Law School and as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware. These lies were later exposed, as well as the fact that he regularly plagiarized speeches of other politicians — including claiming as his own certain personal aspects of the life of British Labor Leader Neil Kinnock. Biden withdrew from the primary after just a few months, long before any votes were cast because he had become a laughing stock.
He was responding to a reporter’s question about the IQs of politicians in the context of whether Biden’s campaign had published scholarly position papers on various matters of political interest.
But approximately one minute into the video, the 46-year-old Biden gives you a very clear window into his mindset about why he saw himself as Presidential material:
Let’s consider his words:
“It seems to me that if you can speak you are at a liability in the Democratic Party anymore. It seems to me that you’ve all become heartless technocrats…. We have never as a party moved this nation by 14 point position papers and 9 point programs… Ultimately Frank this country needs a leader, and a leader change attitudes about people. And it’s the ironic twist that in the wake of Ronald Reagan that the only one thing he knew how to do was the one thing that is now being the currency of which is in fact being devalued so much.”
That is mostly just nonsensical word salad delivered with a heaping helping of self-righteous bravado where it is clear no one enjoys hearing Joe Biden’s voice more than Joe Biden.
But the words are illuminating in the context of Joe Biden’s political aspirations and why he considered himself Presidential material. From Ronald Reagan’s successful eight years as President, the only lesson seemingly learned by Joe Biden was that all that was required to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office was the ability to give a good speech. To Joe, that was “leadership.” In his view, his “skill” in that regard was what separated him from the Democrat primary field in 1988.
I can remember all the press reports during that primary about what a great speaker Biden was — second only to Jesse Jackson it was said. But that view of his public speaking ability, which he internalized and accepted as fact, is pretty much laughable. His delivery in his younger years was clownish because he never sounded sincere. He was overly dramatic in his mannerisms and voice inflection in ways that made his delivery little more than bloviating.
He employed the tactic of “filibustering” to avoid subjects he doesn’t want to be confronted on — of which the clip above is a prime example.
The question initially posed to him asked him about what law school he attended. The subject put Biden immediately on the defensive because he knew as well as most of the press that he wasn’t an Ivy Leaguer — he went to Syracuse Law School and graduated near the bottom of his class. Before the reporter finished the question, Biden launched into his educational background — telling multiple lies — and then at the end offered to compare IQs with the reporter.
The reporter then further clarified that his question was actually a back-handed slap at Pres. Reagan by explaining that he asked about Biden’s education only because “With the people we have elected to office in recent years, I think we have to go through your credentials very solidly.”
That launched Biden off into the ham-fisted assertion that his superior abilities as a speaker were in danger of being discounted — his innate superiority over the field was being “devalued”. In the middle, when trying to emphasize how important it was to “change attitudes”, he walked right up to a female attendee standing at the front of the small gathering and practically shouts his comments about the “Women’s Movement” leadership’s advocacy right in her face. After all, a female attending the event had to be the person most interested in his lecturing about what it was that made the Women’s Movement successful so he owed it to her to direct his lecture at her. In Joe’s mind, she must have understood that he knew better than she did.
The look on her face as he moved away to hector someone else on the next thought that entered his mind is priceless.
But the look on her face is why Joe Biden never became anything more than the media’s favorite candidate in the 1988 race. He formally entered the race in June 1987, and when his numerous problems with honesty surfaced throughout the summer he ended his campaign in September 1987. This was AFTER Gary Hart had withdrawn in May 1987 over the publication of his affair with Donna Rice.
President Reagan was Joe Biden’s “North Star” as to how someone without actual talent or intellect could rise to be President — all you had to do was talk a good game. Everyone in Washington told Joe for 15 years up to that point that he talked as good a game as anyone so he should be President — that’s how it works, right?
That this was his view about Pres. Reagan and how he came to have a successful two-term Presidency with overwhelming electoral wins is just further evidence of the fact that Joe Biden is a moron who learns nothing from events taking place around him.
There is an interesting anecdote in this New York Times story from 2019 that looks back on the 1988 campaign. After being talked about as a potential 1988 primary candidate since 1985, Biden was still undecided whether he wanted to run late in the Spring of 1987. The story says that it was Jill Biden who convinced him the moment was right.
It seems that history repeats itself for Joe Biden in places other than Afghanistan.