Biden Not That Bad

Even the Canadians are noting that Biden bungled some key parts of his DNC speech last night:

But nervous, perhaps, he stumbled several times, misreading the teleprompter as he addressed a pumped audience still high on Bill Clinton’s exhortations to unite behind Obama.

He dropped “McCain” in his critique of the “Bush-McCain” foreign policy. He said 150 more parents have health care in Illinois because of Obama’s work, instead of 150,000; he said McCain proposes $200 million instead of “$200 billion” more in new corporate tax breaks and he said America needed a leader “who can change,” instead of “deliver change.”

Yeah, Biden garbled his words a little bit, and of course it’s hard to say that an imperfectly delivered speech has the same impact it would have had if the orator had nailed the presentation. But I don’t agree with commentators like Chuck Todd (MSNBC) and Jeff Toobin (CNN) who think the speech was a flop. For one, I just plain enjoy Biden’s speaking style. It’s very natural and emotional, more organic than what you get from most politicians. Bill Clinton is a great orator, but one gets the sense that there’s a definite persona at work here–it’s hard to imagine Bill doing his trademarked hand gestures when discussing the grocery list with Hillary. That’s fine, of course–there’s a world of difference between conversing and speechifying. But one gets the sense that there’s not a world of difference between what Biden sounds like when castigating McCain and yelling at his granddaughter for slapping her little brother. He’s not slick; he seems to have one discursive setting. In terms of pure political aesthetics, I like that authenticity.

Now, the speech itself. It wasn’t the greatest speech of all time, but I thought it was good. Yes, Biden bungled some facts that make for great talking points, but so what? You better believe that every single talking point introduced at the convention will be regurgitated a million times over the course of this campaign. It’s not like this was the Democrats’ only chance at telling people that Obama expanded health insurance.

And really, the American public doesn’t watch conventions to learn about data points, they watch it to get pumped up for parties and candidates. In that sense, Biden was a success, at least to me as a television viewer (I’ve read some reports that his speech fell flat in the hall, though it didn’t seem that way). He had two good ra-ra, go-team refrains: that McCain is more of the same, and that “John McCain was wrong, Barack Obama was right.”

I particularly liked this second one, because it (a) was in reference to foreign policy, the issue on which Biden needs to be very aggressive; (b) it’s bold and simple; (c) it’s a very good way of torpedoing McCain’s “experience is paramount” argument. Past records become a lot less compelling if someone is repeatedly proven dead wrong about the critical issues we face now. What good is experience if a leader can’t use it to make the right decisions?

So let’s cut Biden some slack.