http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_pl349
Speaking recently on what would be done differently during the next hundred days of his administration, President Obama joked that he would try to get off the teleprompter more–and get Vice President Joe Biden on.
Well, there’s another promise broken.
Now, it seems, Mr. Biden has disclosed the location of the “undisclosed secret location” to which Vice Presidents flee in times of national emergency.
Or has he? After a Newsweek reporter leaked the story ( http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2009/05/15/shining-light-on-cheney-s-hideaway.aspx), the Vice President’s office said that in fact Biden was talking about an entirely different location from the one reported, and no classified information had been revealed.
Hmmm. Granted, Biden may have simply been trying to make a joke at former Vice President Cheney’s expense. On the other hand, with Biden’s track record (and willingness to demonize Cheney at every opportunity), how do we know that he wasn’t telling the truth? If it were just his own personal security that he (may have) compromised, there might be a touch of morbid humor to it; but this is, after all, the office of the Vice President.
At any rate, the rebuttal would have been more convincing if the rebuttal had been: “The Vice President was making a private joke; no such incident occurred” rather than to contradict an eyewitness account.
One is uncomfortably reminded of the early days of the Clinton administration, when so many of his political appointees kept running into problems with their security clearances. It would be appalling to find out the hard way that sensitive information was being passed to someone who didn’t know when to shut up.
Of course, there’s also the press angle: assuming the story as told is true, why did a member of the press think it advisable to reveal the “undisclosed location” to an interested world? Did she think we wouldn’t be having any more security emergencies? For that matter, why did Biden NOT think that something revealed to people whose job it is to blab wouldn’t get blabbed as well?
All of which goes to show how underappreciated plagiarism can be. It was, after all, a bout with plagiarism that sank Biden’s presidential aspirations in 1988. If not for that… well….
Tags: Biden, foot-in-mouth, loose lips, plagiarism, undisclosed location
