Life of Gaffes for Sloppy Joe Biden
/What a perfect choice! ;)
Joseph Biden brings more than three decades of Washington experience to the Democratic ticket, but the “safe” veep choice has accumulated his share of political baggage along the way.
The loquacious senator from Delaware has a record of gaffes, and has connections to the credit-card industry that could prove embarrassing.
In 2006, he proposed dividing Iraq along sectarian lines.
The plan, however, gained little support among Iraqis.
Biden was born in 1942 in working-class Scranton, Pa, the son of a car salesman and a housewife. The Catholic family moved to Wilmington, Del., when he was 10.
His public-service career began as a lawyer and public defender - and was almost upended when tragedy struck his family on Dec. 18, 1972.
At the time, the handsome, athletic lawyer was 29 and had just been elected as the second youngest US senator in history.
While in Washington, he was notified that his wife, Neilia, and infant daughter had been killed by a drunken driver. His two sons were badly injured in the accident.
The devastated senator-elect mulled quitting before even taking office. But he reconsidered and was sworn into office at the hospital bedside of his older son. To this day, he never works on the anniversary of the tragedy.
Five years after the accident, Biden married Jill Jacobs, a special-needs history teacher.
During his career on Capitol Hill, Biden has earned a reputation as an international-affairs expert and chairs the Foreign Relations Committee. It’s these bona fides that are expected to bolster Obama’s foreign-policy credentials.
But unlike the man at the top of the ticket, Biden supported the use of force in Iraq before the war. He has since become a critic.
Biden’s Washington career has not been without missteps.
In 1987, the senator had made enough of a name for himself that he launched a run for the White House.
But in his stump speeches, Biden quoted long passages from British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock without attributing them[…]