Joe Biden: A Profile in Cowardice
A Profile in Cowardice
by Gene Healy
Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and author of The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power.
Added to cato.org on September 25, 2008
This article appeared in National Review Online on September 25, 2008
In Friday's presidential debate on foreign policy (assuming the show still goes on), we can be sure that Barack Obama will hit John McCain hard for supporting what Obama has called a "dumb war" in Iraq. But in doing so, Obama has at least one major handicap to overcome: his running mate.
In October 2002, Sen. Biden voted to authorize the Iraq war. "I made a mistake," he now says - he had "vastly underestimated" how incompetent the Bush administration would be in prosecuting the war.
So has Biden changed his position on Iraq? Not really. In October 2002, when the congressional vote was held, Biden, like most members of Congress, was in favor of avoiding accountability and punting the question of war or peace to the president. And Biden remains firmly in favor of avoiding accountability for Iraq today. That tells us something about Joe Biden's judgment and integrity. More importantly, it tells us a lot about the health of Congress as a political institution, and about the erosion of Congress's power to declare war.
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