While his madcap persona as everyone’s ‘goofy uncle’ has made him beloved in some circles, Vice President Joe Biden said he’s never been comfortable with the trope, and it almost stopped him from accepting the role in Obama’s White House.
“I’m not comfortable with Goofy Uncle Joe,” Biden told CNBC’s John Harwood, in an interview published Tuesday. “But one of the things that’s important to know – and one of the reasons why, when I first got asked about this job I said no – is there is no inherent power in being vice president.”
Biden also said “the so-called Goofy Uncle Joe” beat “every Republican in every poll” when political watchers thought he was getting ready to launch a third run for the White House.
“You notice that my favorability was higher than anybody that’s running for office in either party,” he said in the interview, which took place aboard a Washington-to-Wilmington, Delaware Amtrak train.
Looking back on his time in the Obama administration, Biden said they “had about eight atom bombs dropped on our desk,” with auto industry recovery and Dodd-Frank among them.
Watch a clip about Biden’s remarks via CNBC:
It’s not the “Goofy Uncle Joe” persona that has ever bothered me, Mr. Biden. It’s that cringe-inducing support for Clarence Thomas in 1991 that burns the fucking hell out of me. I will never forget that. Never.
This is going to be unpleasant to watch, as Joe shuffles off the political stage.
He voted against Thomas in the end though getting there involved lots of bloviating.
It’s understandable the Veep wouldn’t want to be hung with that name. People surely know that the original “Uncle Joe” was Josef Stalin, and it was Churchill and FDR who gave him that benevolent nickname. That is, before he went on to starve and murder as many 20 million of his own people if not more.
Haven’t watched yet, but sounds like still regrets it every day?
I watched the Anita Hill testimony when it happened and I don’t recall Biden supporting Thomas. I watched the HBO movie ‘Confirmation’ the other day and I didn’t get the sense that Biden supported him either but Republicans went to war to get him confirmed.
icymi - This is a good article I read before watching the movie.
‘It was just awful’: The Clarence Thomas hearings, in the words of those who were there