Biden's elegant Sunday morning message to the Iranians

Joe Biden's statement on Stephanoplous' "This Week" Sunday morning has got a lot of people upset that he was signaling the U.S. was giving Israel the green light to attack Iran. Frankly I consider that a wild misinterpretation of what he said and a failure to understand who Biden was really sending a signal to. Here is Biden's statement:

STEPHANOPOULOS: And meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it pretty clear that he agreed with President Obama to give until the end of the year for this whole process of engagement to work. After that, he's prepared to make matters into his own hands.

Is that the right approach?

BIDEN: Look, Israel can determine for itself -- it's a sovereign nation -- what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Whether we agree or not?

BIDEN: Whether we agree or not. They're entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that. But there is no pressure from any nation that's going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed.

What we believe is in the national interest of the United States, which we, coincidentally, believe is also in the interest of Israel and the whole world. And so there are separate issues.

If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But just to be clear here, if the Israelis decide Iran is an existential threat, they have to take out the nuclear program, militarily the United States will not stand in the way?

BIDEN: Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination that they're existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say we can't dictate, but we can, if we choose to, deny over-flight rights here in Iraq. We can stand in the way of a military strike.

BIDEN: I'm not going to speculate, George, on those issues, other than to say Israel has a right to determine what's in its interests, and we have a right and we will determine what's in our interests.

Juan Cole and Yaakov Katz explain what Biden was really saying and doing.

Biden's comment "has a dual function of sending the message to Netanyahu that if he wants to cowboy it he is riding alone, and of warning the Iranians that Netanyahu might just be wild man enough to risk such a unilateral if Iran continues to be so intransigent with regard to seeking enrichment capabilities," Cole told me in an e-mail. "It is actually quite elegant."

The Jerusalem Post's veteran national security reporter, Yaakov Katz, reached a similar conclusion, suggesting Biden's comment could mean the Obama administration is trying to force the Iran engagement train back on track after it was derailed by the recent election.

"The problem was that that the elections led to a political impasse with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared the winner but Mir Hossein Mousavi refusing to recognize the results. As a result, the dialogue has not begun, and if Obama now spoke with Ahmadinejad, it would be as if he were granting legitimacy to an oppressive and violent regime," Katz writes. "This is where Israel comes into play. Biden can use Israel to threaten Iran that if it doesn't settle down at the negotiating table, who knows what the Netanyahu government might do."

As Juan Cole is reported saying, "It is actually quite elegant." Biden's statement restates the obvious truth that Israel is a sovereign nation and that we do not make their security decisions for them. In addition, it puts the Iranian Supreme Leader on notice that we are not going to force Israel to forgo an attack on their nuclear facility. The US simply doesn't have the capability to force them not to do so if the Israelis feel sufficiently threatened by Iran. So the Iranians need to keep that in mind as they decide whether or not to engage with the US and other nations which are upset with their behavior.

The "Veep debate"

It was an interesting "debate" between Palin and Biden, assuming that you can call two individuals standing on the same stage and responding to the same moderator a debate. The "responses" from Palin were pure filibustering. Biden one the event, of course. But that's on debate terms. Biden came off as being an intelligent and experienced man quite ready to become President on January 20th if he has to. Biden knew what he was talking about. Palin didn't. She did a very good job of presenting memorized talking points.

Palin didn't even try to compete with Biden. She came off as being an intelligent child showing off for the grown-ups. Her folksy effort to demonstrate "everyman" credits simply didn't work, but with her inexperience she had no other position she could take. She also didn't bother to try to answer the questions. The format both sides had agreed on permitted no follow-ups, so Palin simply spent her time spouting preprepared talking points. But Palin did not have a "moose-in-the-headlights" moment like she did during the Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric interviews. Since the problems Palin had in those interviews occurred when the interviewers asked follow-up questions, the reason the Palin camp could not accept follow-up questions was quite clear.

The other thing about Palin's demeanor that was that she came off looking like a chipmunk on either speed or ten cups of coffee. Besides looking very young and trying very hard to look like a grown-up, she was so wound up that she was in a different world from the one inhabited by moderator Gwen Ifill or her debate competitor Joe Biden.

In one way I think that Palin is very much like McCain. Neither have a coherent overall philosophy they are operating from. Present them with a situation (Iraq - Afghanistan - the economy - the federal budget - etc.) and each retreats to a list of talking points. Change the situation and the talking points change. Neither seems to have any overall coherent philosophy that guides what they believe.

Biden clearly demonstrated that he has a coherent philosophy. His reaction to Iran is intellectually connected to his reaction to both the federal budget and to military actions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and probably to nuclear nonproliferation in North Korea. Obama similarly has a coherent philosophy and world view.

As to the points both Biden and Palin made, I'll let the experts dissect those items. They aren't going to change the minds of independents.

James Fallows presented an analysis that I very much agree with. Briefly here is what he said:

1. Gwen Ifill as moderator: Terrible.
2. Sarah Palin's overall performance: Beat expectations. Considering how low the expectations had been set, how could she not?
3. Joe Biden's overall performance: No mistakes. That was a major accomplishment.
4. The impact of the debate on the overall race: No fundamental change.

[Click the link for his reasons.]

Since the credit crisis has shifted the Presidential race away from the McCain agenda of character and military affairs to economics and the failure of the Bush administration, the fact that this "debate" was not a game-changers is bad news for McCain.

Biden tells The Truth about the Republicans

Joe speaks:

Here's a video of CNN salivating as Obama played them like dogs waiting for a treat

As I wrote yesterday, Obama was using the veep selection to play the media, making them line up and bark on command -- and it did them no good at all. They finally got the news from the Internet, just like all the rest of us did. How crazy did it drive the TV personalities? Kevin Allocca and Stephen Sherrill put together a video of CNN personalities going crazy as they tried to fill air time with a total absence of news. Here's their video.



That's what I was describing when I wrote "The Veepstakes has had the reporters sitting at Obama's feet panting with their tongues hanging out like dogs waiting for a treat. Even better, the pundits/TV personalities have been going wild with both anticipation and frustration as they can't get any news on the choice."

This was all about Obama making his first real Presidential-level decision. Suddenly he wasn't just another aspirant for the Democratic nomination who had to accept whatever treatment the media doled out to him. Suddenly Obama was the man in charge and the Washington Political Press had to play the game by his rules.

I wonder how the Associated Press' Washington Bureau Chief and strong McCain supporter Ron Fournier will fare when he has to get cooperation from an Obama White House. His anti-Obama "reporting" is already legendary. (See Media Matters and Politico.) Right now he is part of the Washington Political Press which is tuned in to the needs of the Republican Party and Bush/Cheney/Rove.

Will there be a bid shift between the current political Press insiders and a new set when Obama takes over? From Fournier I anticipate more lies and much whining that he is not being treated in the royal manner deserved by a Bureau Chief of his stature.

Tough.

Biden for Veep? Steve Clemons thinks so.

I don't know enough to get involved in the Veep-stakes game, but Steve Clemons does. Yesterday he published his opinion that it will be Joe Biden, and offered his logic.

So far nothing else I have seen makes as much sense, but this game is a lot like arguing for "Intelligent Design" (Creationism) as a scientific theory of the development of Species rather than Evolution. Evolution takes known and verifiable facts and builds a theory to explain how they could be used to explain the evolution of Species.

"Intelligent Design" sets up a process in which every logical barrier to human understanding of the development of species is turned over to a supernatural Intelligent being to explain because God can perform miracles. Instead of being science, Intelligent Design assumes that human beings cannot understand the reason or mechanism for the development of species. Science is a dead end because only God - the Intelligent Miracle Worker - can possibly understand that. That's the definition of a miracle. Something occurred that has no known cause and was directed by a miracle worker no human can ever understand. So logic and science are useless in understanding how something occurred.

Steve's analysis is somewhat similar to Intelligent Design, in that he is attempting to apply logic and fact collection to an event that ultimately will be decided by a single intelligent decider - in this case, Barack Obama. The only difference is that we know the mechanism, so the decision will not be a miracle.

Of all the guesses about the Veep decision I have seen, so far Steve's is the best I have seen. But if I have gotten over my skepticism of any and all current analysis of the current writings on who the Veep will be, then my job here is done.

Biden can't get past his vote on Bankruptcy

Booman points out that no significant blogger has been found to support Joe Biden in his run for President. He attributes this to Biden's vote to support the truly despicable Bankruptcy bill that the credit card companies bought a few years ago.

Booman has it right. Joe has his flaws, but he has often been the only Senator who openly stated things about the Iraq War that needed to be said. He has a number of things going for him. But he is going nowhere in his Presidential run largely because of his vote on the Bankruptcy bill.