The Next Day

October 3, 2008, 9:32 am; posted by
Filed under Bwog, Steve  | 3 Comments

I don’t know. Part of the reason I was unsatisfied with Palin’s performance (see the post below) was the sheer number of missed opportunities to say important, overlooked things about Obama and Biden, and the fact that her opponent looked and sounded a lot more comfortable answering the questions.

But upon reflection, I think part of the problem was that Joe Biden is simply an excellent liar who happens to be very telegenic. He makes crap up and he does it with a straight face.

He lied about us spending more in a month in Iraq ($10B) than we have in 7 years in Afghanistan ($172B). He lied about his position of “always” being in favor of clean coal — he just said he wasn’t a few weeks ago. He lied about McCain’s alleged vote to raise taxes. For goodness’ sake, the man even lied about Katie’s Restaurant in Wilmington, which closed years ago.

The McCain campaign has a list of other lies here, although I don’t agree with all of them. For instance, Biden didn’t lie when he said McCain was “dead wrong on Iraq” just because he agreed with him for a little while.

But he did lie a lot — and he sounded great doing it.

UPDATE: There are a few more in this post .


Comments

3 Comments to “The Next Day”

  1. MC-B on October 3rd, 2008 2:51 pm

    Palin was also mistaken several times: the magic “budget neutral” health care tax credit or the “millions” of small businesses affected by the Obama/Biden plan are some examples. FactCheck.org has a more comprehensive (though nonexhaustive) list of misstatements. Their article on the mortgage crisis isn’t too bad, either.

  2. Steve on October 3rd, 2008 3:36 pm

    True. I mention Biden only because he had the advantage of seeming to know what he was talking about. When Biden is wrong, which is often (when did we kick Hezbollah out of Lebanon again?), he’s still convincing; Palin, not so much.

  3. MC-B on October 3rd, 2008 8:24 pm

    I only said it in the interest of equal time. It’s also hard to believe Palin was ever really lying when it she’s a relative newcomer who doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp on everything the way a lifer like Biden should. Still, they’re both running for the same position.

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