Don't Say Biden Had No Skills
He was a genius at physically avoiding talking to people smarter than himself.
“But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.”
From my Substack comments:
9h
Biden was a tough nut for [Theodore] White and [Richard Ben] Cramer to crack, because they were interested in politicians with attractive personalities and fresh ideas. Biden's only idea is to find the exact center of the Democratic Party and to occupy that spot, so he has never intentionally said anything interesting.
As for his personality, I'll repeat a story I've told here before. When he was gearing up to run for president in the 1988 cycle, Biden gave a talk on the campus of the college I was attending. He went on about a magazine article he'd read, and in the Q & A one of the professors gently challenged him about his interpretation of the article. Rather than handle the challenge with a charming smile and a mild and forgettable joke, as most politicians would do, Biden got defensive and yelled at the guy from the podium.
At the reception afterward, Biden latched on to me. I wondered why he insisted on talking to me, since I was obviously a person of no consequence and didn't have much to say. I gradually realized that he had picked me because I was the tallest person there. Every time he saw the professor approaching him, Biden would turn, I would turn in response, and the professor would find himself looking at my back. I was miserable when I realized what he was using me to do, but I couldn't think of a way to escape.
Sometimes Biden would say something objectively interesting, like claiming his Uncle Ambrose was eaten by New Guinea cannibals. But, still, Trump gets more traction talking about what he saw on TV last night.
A useful skill indeed as almost everyone is smarter than Biden. People think he was normal until the dementia but he was dumb as a bag of hammers even in what passes for his prime. He is hardly alone in being dumb yet powerful, I met Dan Quayle when he was inexplicably running for President and he was one of the stupidest people I have ever met.