Spin Your Veep Round and Round

"Part of what being a leader does to instill confidence is to demonstrate what he or she knows what they are talking about and communicating to people ... this is how we can fix this. When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed. He said, 'look, here's what happened.'"

That's Joe Biden, in a CBS interview with Katie Couric.

Problem 1: When the stock market crashed in 1929, FDR wasn't the President. Herbert Hoover was. Problem 2: in 1929, nobody was watching television. The only people that owned a TV had dibs on experimental sets that emitted a weird, orange glow the size of a credit card.

So much for instilling confidence by appearing to know what you're talking about.

Grant, in a rare DVD release, 1946

You probably didn't hear much about this latest of Biden's gaffes. It's not newsworthy because he's only running as a VP. As Slate tells it, Biden is a "harmless gaffe machine." As the LA Times notes, Biden merely "misspoke" about FDR and the history of the television set.

Misspoke. Harmless. Uh-huh.

Now let me ask you, my darling friends and readers, if Sarah Palin had misspoken in the same way, what do you think the reaction would have been to that harmless gaffe? We saw how she was raked over the coals for the Bush Doctrine. But flubbing FDR, the Great Depression, and TV?

It would have been a bloodbath, and you know it.

I am loving the Palin VP candidacy. Loving it.