Moe Lane

Let me tell you a tale of the incompetence of Vice President Joe Biden.  Trust me, this one is even better than usual.

Once upon a time, back in the days when Joe Biden was a bad Senator instead of a bad Vice President, he had a staffer named Victoria Nourse.  Ms. Nourse’s major claim to fame was ‘helping’ to write the (later deemed partially-unconstitutional) Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that was one of Senator Biden’s signature pieces of legislation; ‘helped’ is in square quotes because originally Biden took full credit for the law – like Biden typically does – until he got caught at it in 2007.  This was, of course, perhaps a little awkward… but then events transpired in 2008 that Senator Biden became Vice President Biden, which meant that Ms. Nourse could be given a nice consolation prize of a federal judgeship.

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Well, this is rich.  In the process of complaining about how the White House seems to be a combination of Mayor Daley and Barney Fife – no, really, that’s explicitly the two figures that they used – Politico reports:

One senior House Democrat said it is baffling “how one group of people can be so good at campaigning and so bad at politics” — a phrasing nearly identical to that of a second veteran House Democrat who expressed the same sentiment.

(H/T: Instapundit) No, what’s baffling is that there are senior members of the Democratic party who are actually still possessed of the belief that the Obama administration was good at campaigning. I mean, I understand that it’s necessary to keep telling the rank-and-file that they won in 2008 because their leader was off playing… what’s the phrase? “12-dimensional chess?”… but surely the higher-ups need to be firmly in contact with Reality Non-Unicorn, yes? (more…)

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

(H/T: Hot Air Headlines) Today’s entry has as its theme How to succeed in insulting the press corps without really trying.

For reporters covering President Obama, there’s only one party in town that matters: The White House Holiday Party. It’s a rare opportunity to walk around parts of the White House and meet the president and first lady. In the past, the highlight of the event has been the chance to get your picture taken with the president in the receiving line.

This year, however, the White House seems to be doing things a little differently. The invites went out late – and didn’t include journalists who have been invited in the past. And those who have been invited seem likely to be denied the traditional receiving-line photo.

There’s a lot of good schadenfreude in the Politico article, if you’re the sort to mock the press corps for this – which I’m actually not inclined to do, in fact.  The reason why I’m not is because of this sentence:

“It’s always been a big deal,” said [Dee Dee] Myers, who served as press secretary to former President Bill Clinton. “It’s exhausting [for the president] but it’s the one time when reporters feel like they’re treated like human beings and not just some guy behind the rope line. It’s the one time they can actually say hello.”

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