President Barack Obama has unleashed Vice President Joe Biden and sent him out to attack Republicans across the country. However, the effort may produce mixed results due to Biden’s tendency to go off message.
Biden is to deliver a series of speeches about the economy and the middle class in an attempt to define the issues in the presidential election,
USA Today reported. At a Thursday visit to a United Auto Workers local in Toledo, Ohio, Biden used his first official campaign speech to do something Obama has avoided: mention Republican rivals Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum by name.
“In 2009, no one was lining up to lend General Motors or Chrysler any money, or for that matter to lend money to anybody,” Biden said, according to a report by Bloomberg News. “That includes Bain Capital, they weren’t lining up to lend anybody money.” Romney co-founded Bain Capital LLC.
“Gingrich and Romney and Santorum, they don’t let the facts get in their way,” Biden said.
He told the auto workers the GOP was "dead wrong" about Obama's rescue of the car industry rescue, according to USA Today. Obama “didn’t flinch” over the decision, Biden said. “This is a man with steel in his spine.”
However,
The Washington Post writes, “The notion of Biden as master campaigner has some complications.” In a lengthy story, the Post recounted the gaffes and mistakes that have bedeviled the long-time Washington politician.
“His presidential runs have failed badly. Accusations that he plagiarized a speech by British Labor leader Neil Kinnock, followed by the unearthing of an earlier incident of plagiarism in law school, led him to drop out of the 1988 presidential race.
“And in 2008, the week he officially announced his second bid for office, he ran into trouble by calling Obama ‘the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.’
“He dropped out after finishing fifth in the Iowa caucuses. His strong debate performances, long resume and political chops persuaded Obama to take him to the White House, but as vice president, he also brought along a reputation for loose talk.”
The Republican National Committee has used Biden’s mistakes, such as him saying a “three-letter word: jobs — J-O-B-S,” to criticize the administration, the Post reported.
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