Just Testing: Is the Junior Senator from Illinois Ready to Lead?

If Hillary Clinton were the Democratic nominee, no one would be questioning her readiness to lead the nation at this stage of the general election campaign. For one thing, she would have known better than to pick Joe Biden for her running mate. The gaffe-prone Biden, who customarily gets a free pass from the media as in, “That’s just Joe, being Joe,” has caused some concern with his recent guarantee of an international crisis in the first six months of an Obama Administration.

As a consequence, Obama is again on the defensive about his foreign policy credentials, and as we know, the Obama campaign is masterful at stagecraft.

According to the LA Times:

“Reporting from Richmond, Va., and Cincinnati -- Barack Obama, thrown on the defensive by his own running mate, staged a high- profile appearance with a team of silver-haired advisors Wednesday to assert his readiness for any foreign crisis that might erupt if he becomes president.

‘“Yes, we are going to face a number of threats and tests and challenges,’ the Democratic nominee told reporters. Obama blamed that prospect on ‘a bad set of policies’ pursued by President Bush, which he said have produced ‘unresolved wars’ in Iraq and Afghanistan and a slumping world economy.

“That's why it's going to be important for us, I think, to move with resolve in a new direction," Obama said after a closed-door session with his national security brain trust at a hotel in downtown Richmond, Va.

“The question of judgment and experience -- especially on national defense and foreign policy matters -- has hung over Obama throughout the campaign, starting in the primaries. Lately, however, there have been signs that voters have grown increasingly comfortable with the idea of the Illinois senator sitting in the Oval Office.”

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Media Pillories Sarah Palin, but Gives Gaffe-Prone Biden a Pass

Photo credits: AP

Kirsten Powers at the New York Post is wondering why Biden’s latest gaffe at a fundraiser last Sunday hasn’t exploded in the media. Powers rightly points out that if Sarah Palin had dropped such a bombshell regarding a McCain Administration, we would never hear the last of it.

But heck, folks, Biden was just warning us of a possible international crisis if Obama is elected. Over at the left-leaning Huffington Post the banner headline on the front page is all about Sarah Palin’s expensive wardrobe paid for by the RNC. Now which issue do you think the American people should be most worried about?

Powers puts Biden’s scary comments into perspective:

“Barack Obama's choice of Joe Biden as his running mate prompted a small wave of warnings about Biden's propensity for gaffes. But no one imagined even in a worse-case scenario such a spectacular bomb as telling donors Sunday to "gird your loins" because a young president Obama will be tested by an international crisis just like young President John Kennedy was.

“Scary? You betcha! But somehow, not front-page news.

“Again the media showed their incredible bias by giving scattered coverage of Biden's statements.

‘“There were a few exceptions. On MSNBC's ‘Morning Joe,’ co-host Mika Brzezinski flipped incredulously through the papers, expressing shock at the lack of coverage of Biden's remarks. Guest Dan Rather admitted that if Palin had said it, the media would be going nuts.

“So what gives?

‘“The stock answer is: ‘It's just Biden being Biden.’ We all know how smart he is about foreign policy, so it's not the same as when Sarah Palin says something that seems off.

‘“Yet, when Biden asserted incorrectly in the vice-presidential debate that the United States ‘drove Hezbollah out of Lebanon,’ nobody in the US media shrieked. (It was, however, covered with derision in the Middle East.) Or when he confused his history by claiming FDR calmed the nation during the Depression by going on TV, the press didn't take it as evidence that he's clueless.

“And Biden is the foreign-policy gravitas on the Democratic ticket, so his comments are actually even more disconcerting.”

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