Jay P. Greene's Blog

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

In this golden age when Higgyworthy candidates are so numerous that last year’s Higgy convention almost failed to nominate one because the delegate was paralyzed by choice, it takes something special to stand out among the crowd. But one sure way to find the heroes whose “arrogant delusions of shaping the world to meet their own will” truly tower over the rest is to look to your elders – to those special people whose decades-long commitment to diligent and sustained blowhardism has not only accumulated a distinguished track record of inane interference and pointless posturing, but has moved the all-important “Higgyton Window” so future generations of aspiring PLDDers can sink to new depths that their elders only dreamed of.

With that in mind, I’d like to nominate recently retired Vice President Joe Biden not only for 2017 William Higginbotham Inhumanitarian of the Year but also for a Lifetime Achievement Higgy Award.

With Biden recently talking about how he totally would have won the presidency if he had run, it seems like a perfect time to recognize him with The Higgy. I submit the following achievements for the judge’s consideration:

World-Class Dispropotion of Reputation to Achievement

As Mark Hemingway pointed out when the race for the 2016 nomination was getting underway, one reason Biden had a strong incentive to run against Clinton was also a reason he might have had trouble gaining traction against her: He, like she, wanted to win the presdiency in order to secure a legacy – because he, like she, had built a strong reputation as a Very Serious Political Leader based on a long and distinguished career of accomplishing nothing in public service: “Biden spent 36 years in the Senate beginning in 1972, and if you blinked, you’d miss the highlight reel.”

His Vice Presidency did little to augment this record, as The Onion constantly reminded us.

Truly Epic Mouthrunning

Joe Biden’s mouth has been a running gag for so long, it’s hard to recapture an appreciation of just how unique his talent for blowhardism is. This, mind you, is a man in a line of work where the standards for blowhardism are very high. Don’t bring your complaints about listening to you boring uncle around here, kid – in DC, that stuff doesn’t even get past the bouncer.

But in a field of top-notch blowhards, Biden is literally a blowhard’s blowhard. A while back (can’t find it now) a Weekly Standard profile opened with the observation that Biden’s tendency to blowhardism is a running gag even to Biden himself; he arrives on the scene of a speech he is to give and when the host pleads with him not to run over, he smiles and blows her off, and proceeds to run something like double his allotted time.

He Totally Helped Invent Borking But Also Totally Didn’t!

Among the many ups and downs of the American republic, there have been only a handful of really disastrous, unambiguously bad and wrong changes in our constitutional structure – like direct election of senators (bye bye, federalism). One of the worst of these was the decision to import the politics of dishonest personal destruction into judicial nominations. Now, it is important not to romanticize the political past. But the reasonably fair treatment of judicial nominees really was a bipartisan tradition that we relied on to make American democracy work. There is now no realistic path to restore it and no serious substitute.

If we were talking about Ted Kennedy’s role in the original Bork hearings, I would say there’s a case that he was more BSDD than PLDD. Kennedy destroyed the career of an innocent man by abusing power – like that notorious asterisk in the Higgy record books, David Sarnoff.

Biden’s role was Higgyworthy because he did his best to eat his cake and have it too. He tried to appease his party’s irresponsible Left while also trying, as chairman of the hearings, to look fair and respectable. He thus positioned himself for his long career run as a Very Serious Man who is not to be taken seriously.

Eww.

Just eww.

Plagarism and Lies

I’m actually inclined to give Biden a break for the infamous Kinnock incident. Biden had used the Kinnock line with attribution on multiple previous occasions; it seems clear to me that he just didn’t remember to include the attribution this one time. A mistake, but it shouldn’t be a hanging offense. This strikes me as akin to the famous Howard Dean Howl – something that wouldn’t have been a big deal except that it could be interpreted in light of a larger public predisposition toward the candidate, fair or unfair (Dean was seen as ideologically nutty, Biden as a phony).

But let’s not forget that Biden also committed plagarism in law school! And told a series of lies about his law school accomplishments:

A few days later [after the Kinnock kerfuffle], Biden’s plagiarism incident in law school came to public light. Video was also released showing that when earlier questioned by a New Hampshire resident about his grades in law school, he had stated that he had graduated in the “top half” of his class, that he had attended law school on a full scholarship, and that he had received three degrees in college, each of which was untrue or exaggerations of his actual record.

What could be more Higgyworthy, more an expression of “arrogant delusions of shaping the world to meet their own will,” than plagarism and lying about your academic accomplishments?

Medal of Freedom

No, seriously, Joe Biden totally got the Medal of Freedom:

Tell me that alone is not Higgyworthy.

Remember, The Al got its glorious start largely as a response to Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Let’s keep the tradition alive!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2017 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Greg Forster, William Higginbotham Inhumanitarian Award. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.