The Hound Of Ulster

THIS one involves all the AIG/financial turmoil:

Lauer was talking about how Obama hit Sen. McCain, R-Ariz., for flip-flopping on the AIG bailout — saying he opposed it one day then announced he supported it the next day.

But, as Lauer pointed out, scarcely three minutes after McCain said he opposed the AIG bailout last week, “in an interview with Meredith Vieira, Joe Biden, your running mate was asked the exact same question: ’should the federal government bail out AIG?’ And he said, ‘No, the federal government should not bail out AIG.’”  “And I think that, in that situation,” Obama said, “I think Joe should have waited, as well.”

Lauer pushes the issue, though, and receives a “vintage Politicaspeak” response:

“But it’s the kind of thing that drives people crazy about politics,” Lauer said. “It sounds like you were trying to score some political points against John McCain using his words, when your own running mate had used very similar words.”

“No, hold on a second Matt,” Obama said. “I think what drives people crazy about politics is the fact that somebody like John McCain who, for 26 years, has been an advocate for deregulation, for 26 years has said the market is king and then starts going out there suggesting somehow that he’s a populist who’s been railing against Wall Street and regulation — that’s what drives people crazy about politics.”

Actually, the “trying to score political points at all costs” thing does drive people crazy, Barry.

He and his potential VP continue to disagree on POLICY ISSUES and CAMPAIGN STRATEGY, though Biden’s not opposed to changing his mind.

But as the moment went viral, hitting the internet traffic engine the Drudge Report, Biden revised and extended his remarks in a statement — saying he hadn’t even seen it when he condemned it.

“Having now reviewed the ad, it is even more clear to me that given the disgraceful tenor of Sen McCain’s ads and their persistent falsehoods, his campaign is in no position to criticize,” he said, “especially when they continue to distort Barack’s votes on an issue as personal as keeping kids safe from sexual predators.”

Great.

THIS is definitely my favorite, though.  Sure, there are probably plenty of perfectly reasonable explanations, but it says so much in such a short clip.

Joe Biden’s denunciation of his own campaign’s ad to Katie Couric got so much attention last night that another odd note in the interview slipped by.

He was speaking about the role of the White House in a financial crisis.

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed,” Biden told Couric. “He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”

As Reason’s Jesse Walker footnotes it: “And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, ‘Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?’”

Oops.  My bad.  I had forgotten about this FAVORITE.