Honest Joe

....for a day, anyway.

Here's Senator Rogaine's gaffe de jour.  Pay close attention, though, to how quickly and graciously he corrects himself and owns up to it:

He didn't try to turn the boner into an embryonic stem cell riff like Opie Edwards did four years ago.  He didn't try to brazen his way past it or pretend it never happened.  He admitted right on stage that he screwed up and apologized like a man.

Indeed, that's not the only thing he admitted to today:

Has a veep candidate EVER said such a thing before?  Ever?  Better question: Why did Biden suddenly get overcome by hot flashes of candor after only a couple of weeks?

Could it be that he's like the guest in a burning house watching the flames consume everything around him who decides that now might be a good time to leave early for his next appointment?  Recall how vehemently he denied being Obama's veep choice just a few days before Barry sent his plane to pick him up in Delaware.  I think it's plausible that he was as dumbfounded as the rest of the planet when The One shafted Hillary Clinton and tapped him instead, was flattered at first, got his heady rush at the Donk convention, and is now getting a faceful of just what a cluster he's gotten himself into.  And, being Joe Biden, he couldn't maintain the public mask of confidence and unity that his role requires of him.  As votes of confidence go, this mea culpa is more emasculating for BO than anything Jesse Jackson ever envisioned.

AP wonders if this may be the cue for Lucifer to pull an Eagleton and swap Slow Joe for the Empress.  But if she's willing to say nary a discouraging word about Sarah Palin as it is, why in the blue hell would she throw him that magnitude of life preserver when she can just let the Messiah crucify himself, drag his political carcass off to an unmarked tomb that no angel will ever open, and resume her long march back to the White House?

If Obama had asked her three weeks ago, she'd have had little choice but to accept; as I argued at the time, it was the only way to unify and electrify the Donk base and finally bust out to that big lead that John Sith McCain could never have overcome.  It wouldn't so much have "Palin-proofed" Obama as rendered ANY veep choice McCain could have made functionally irrelevant.  The reason that Palinmania is running wild and Team Hussein is cratering in the polls is precisely that St. Barack couldn't swallow enough of his pride to do what was necessary to clinch victory and left Darth Queeg an opening big enough to pilot a star destroyer through.  Not only did Maverick do that and more, but the ensuing blood persecution of Barracuda is like the firestorm after the nuclear blast, flensing the remaining scorched flesh off of False Messiah's dessicating remains.

Even if Obama did make that veep substitution, I have to wonder how much impact it would really have.  Would a showdown with Medusa not be a prime opportunity for Sarah?  Wouldn't Hill have a lot to lose from the matchup?  Would Obama get credit for admitting his stupendous error?  Or is this clunker sufficiently larger than failing to notice the guy you just invited to stand up is a parapalegic that a graceful way out just doesn't exist?  And, again, why would Hillary do him that favor on top of the ones she's already done for him ("suspending" her campaign in June, letting him be nominated, endorse him in her keynote address, go along with the theatrics of putting him over the top for the nomination), almost all of them (particularly helping her retire her tens of millions in campaign debt) unrecupricated?

I think it's academic.  Barack Obama is The One.  He doesn't make mistakes - or at least, doesn't admit to them: