Joe Biden: 'Literally Winning the Future'

“What’s Joe Biden doing this week while we’re bombing Qaddafi?” Hot Air asks, with snark aforethought:

The Blue Jays eventually made it inside to the clubhouse, but not before Biden — a big Phillies fan, it should be noted — held about 30 minutes of court with Alex Rodriguez(notes) (who had requested a special audience), Mariano Rivera(notes) (pictured above) and other members of the Yankees.

Let him hang out at the ballpark; he can do the least damage there. Just watch out for the Amtrak ride back to DC. “Biden, like a lot of eccentrics, loves to play with trains,” Jonah Goldberg notes. “What makes him different is that he prefers real ones:”

As a senator, he famously rode Amtrak to get home to Delaware. And because he failed to understand that what worked for him might not work for everyone, he’s funneled billions of dollars to a passenger-rail system that cannot survive in the market. If he had the same response to a great plate of chicken wings, he’d want a subsidy for that too.

Biden’s real passion is high-speed rail, which wastes money at two to three times the speed of conventional passenger rail. Never mind that high-speed rail would destroy our freight-rail system, which is the best in the world (and quite green), or that it would crush state budgets with federally imposed white elephants. Biden has convinced the president that this is the only way to “win the future.” Obama made that case during his last State of the Union address. And just the other day, while campaigning in Florida, Biden told reporters that he and Sen. Bill Nelson (D., Fla.) and the president are “focused on literally — it sounds like a trite phrase — but literally winning the future.”

Thank goodness they’re not just figuratively focused on winning the future. They’re quite literal about it. Charlie Sheen talks about winning figuratively, but not our Joe — and not the president of the United States, apparently.

And that’s what’s so dismaying: People are taking Joe seriously.

But consider how low the bar was already set by the rest of the administration. And considering this infamous moment from Biden in 1988, Jonah’s article seems to dovetail remarkably well with this post by David Foster at the Chicago Boyz blog, which asks,“What, Precisely, is the Issue with ‘Elites?'”

Click over and read the whole thing, but in the meantime, note this passage:

5)People who have achieved success in one field too often assume a faux expertise in unrelated fields, as with the actor or singer who is credited with having something worthwhile to say about foreign policy or economics irrespective of lack of study/experience in those fields.

6)People who have achieved success via the manipulation of words and images have increasingly tended to discount all other forms of intelligence…for those who attacked George W Bush as “stupid”, for example, the fact that he learned to fly a supersonic fighter (the F-102, not the most pilot-friendly airplane ever designed) was a totally irrelevant piece of data.

7)Markers that have played a role in assessing class status in many societies–accent and manner of speech, in particular—seem to be becoming increasingly important. This factor has a lot to do with the hostility directed toward Sarah Palin as well as that directed toward George W Bush. Had these two individuals spoken in the manner expected of one who has attended boarding schools and expensive eastern colleges–regardless of the academic quality of those schools and colleges–their critics would still have probably disliked them, but the hostility would have lost much of its hysterical edge.

I disagree with that last paragraph, if only because in the binary thinking of the left, if a Republican acts folksy, he’s an idiot (see also: Coolidge, Ike, Ford, Reagan and both Bushes), but a Republican who’s precise and articulate will automatically be dubbed evil and paranoid. (QED: Nixon, Cheney, even Dewey for that matter.)

And gaffes from fellow leftists are excusable because they’re the good guys and mean well.

Which brings us back to Joe Biden, of course.