The Art of the Gaffe
Is Joe Biden’s classic campaign schtick perfect for 2020?
Joe Biden has been called many things: Vice President of the United States, consummate deal-maker, progressive-liberal stalwart; he has also been called, and called himself, and a gaffe machine.
Selling Biden as the perfect foil for the inexperienced but meticulous Barack Obama in 2008 is one thing. In the presidential race of 2020, voters will be measuring Joe Biden against current U.S. President Donald Trump.
How will the two compare?
Trump isn’t so much a gaffe machine as a threat to the whole idea of a gaffe. In a world of his daily outrageous statements, and where even Trump’s most mundane statements are subject to the hostile witness treatment of the U.S. press corps, it is going to be difficult to cast anything he says as embarrassing. Trump doesn’t embarrass easily.
To the U.S. progressive left, Trump himself is an embarrassment.
Perhaps Biden himself put it best when contrasting his easy if sometimes cringeworthy political speaking style with that of Donald Trump:
“I am a gaffe machine. But my God, what a wonderful thing compared to a guy who can’t tell the truth.” — former Vice President Joe Biden…