Joe Biden, one helluva happy warrior

I’m sorry I missed this yesterday, but as Ed Kilgore points out, it’s one of those rare bits of political prediction that reads even better after the event. You might say it’s like day-old jambalaya in that regard.

From Charles P. Pierce at Esquire, anticipating Joe Biden’s debate performance:

“Joe Biden is not riven with self-doubt. Joe Biden is not exhausted by the hurly-burly of politics. Joe Biden is not burdened by the weight of events and laid low by the constant battle against know-nothing obstructionism. Joe Biden is not going to take the stage tonight and find himself wishing he were anywhere else. I mean, god be good to him, as my gran’ used to say, but Joe Biden actually likes all these silly performance pieces in which we insist he be engaged in order to stay vice-president. He revels in them. He would do ten of them a day, if he could. When I consider Joe Biden, and I look at the enthusiasm with which he throws himself into the various cataracts and torrents of hogwash that constitute our politics these days, I find myself looking at him the way I look at people who sky-dive or drive in demolition derbies. I have no idea why they do what they do, and I have absolutely no intention of doing it myself, ever, but, goddamn, do those people look like they’re having fun.

So tonight, when Biden takes the stage to debate Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin, it is very unlikely that the debate will hinge on whether either man really wants to be there. Biden eats these kinds of things on toast, and Ryan is as ambitious as Satan.”

All I can say is … Yup.

One further point, though. A lot of Democrats were heartened by Biden’s performance last night and eager to see President Obama equally engaged and passionate in the second presidential debate, coming next week.

Well, be careful what you wish for.

Last night, Joe Biden was just being Joe Biden. He pulled it off because like him or hate him, that’s who he truly is. On the other hand, Obama trying to pull a Joe Biden would be disastrous. A performance like that just isn’t in Obama’s nature, and he has to find his own way of reasserting himself. The second debate will be almost as important to Obama as the first debate was to Romney.

– Jay Bookman