The Pros v. The Joes

By Keith Boykin, in politics
Thursday, February 1 2007, 10:48AM

Every Thursday, Spike TV airs a show called "The Pros v. The Joes." It's the type of show you might expect from Spike TV, a network targeted to men. It's an hour of airtime in which so-called "regular Joes" get to face off with professional athletes in tests of skill. Last week's episode, for example, featured three competitors in a home run derby with Jose Canseco, trying to tackle former Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin and standing tall against former NBA star Kevin Willis in a rebound competition. By the time UFC champion Randy Couture stepped into the Octagon with the three amateurs, the audience is left cringing in the hopes that no one gets hurt. It's like watching a train wreck waiting to happen.

Strangely enough, that's also the way I felt when watching Joe Biden's announcement of his presidential campaign yesterday. Certainly, Joe Biden is no ordinary Joe when it comes to politics. But when you put the "presidential" prefix in front of him, he just seems to choke. Yesterday Biden launched his campaign and immediately came under fire for coarse and insensitive remarks he made about his three leading rivals, Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. As if to underscore the point that his campaign might be a joke, he finished the day with a previously scheduled appearance on Comedy Central's hit "Daily Show with Jon Stewart."

Biden's Presidential Past

What started as the one good day of free publicity turned into a nightmare that wouldn't end for Biden. During an interview with the New York Observer, published the same day, Biden described Barack Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." So much for Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton. Biden also ran into trouble for dismissive remarks he made about the Iraq proposals put forward by Sens. Edwards and Clinton. Not a good way to start your campaign.

The first time I met Joe Biden was almost 20 years ago during the 1988 presidential campaign season. I was a young campaign staffer, just out of college, who had moved to Boston to work for Governor Michael Dukakis. I worked in the press office, right next to the campaign manager's office, where one day a strange videotape came floating through the office. On it was a video of British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, who used a very familiar line in describing his background. It was familiar because it was the same line that we had heard Joe Biden use in describing his background. Biden had apparently stolen the line from his British compatriot.

Some enterprising people at the Dukakis campaign came up with the idea of sending the videotape to the news media, which then exposed Biden as a "plagiarist." Immediately afterward, though, the Biden camp started asking questions about the source of the videotape, and it didn't take long before fingers started pointing at the Dukakis camp. By the end of the "scandal," Dukakis campaign manager John Sasso was ensnared in the ordeal and fired from his job for sending out the so-called "attack video." But by that time, the damage was done to Biden.

Lesson 1 in Politics

These days, that would hardly be a scandal. A candidate who caught his opponent in a misstep would simply post the damaging video on YouTube, as we saw during the the George Allen macaca-gate scandal. In fact, even when there's not much of a controversy, people who dislike a candidate are free to post unflattering video of the candidate, as someone apparently did with the Iowa video of Hillary Clinton singing The National Anthem off key in Iowa over the weekend.

But the real lesson for the candidates is something they should have learned a long time ago in politics. I remember back in June 1987 when I drove down to Boston from New Hampshire and met with Governor Dukakis in his office in the Massachusetts State House. He gave me one piece of advice that I remember today. "Never write anything down that you don't feel comfortable seeing in the New York Times or Boston Globe," he said. In other words, he was saying to watch your mouth, and your keyboard. It is the first lesson in politics. And it's a wonder that Joe Biden still hasn't gotten it.

That's not to say that Joe Biden is a bad person or a bad senator or even a bad politician. I have nothing against Biden, and I think he's a very able, capable senator. In fact, he has far more experience that Clinton, Edwards or Obama. But when it comes to presidential politics, he just doesn't seem to get it. Or maybe he does. Maybe he's not serious about running for president. After all, no one expects him to win anyway. Maybe it's something much more simple. Maybe he likes the excitement of being an ordinary Joe playing against the pros.

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