Bidenisms

This Week’s Bidenisms

Collecting the vice president’s gaffes and head-slappers.

The vice president did not produce any new Bidenisms this week, but we’ve gone back into the archives to find three from last year. Please continue to send your nominations (with a link, please) to slatebidenisms@gmail.com. For more, and our stab at a definition, see “The Complete Bidenisms.”

“It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. … We’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. …  It’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”—Hitting on a John McCain talking point about Barack Obama’s foreign policy inexperience at a fundraiser for the Obama presidential campaign, Seattle, Oct. 20, 2008

Click here to listen to audio of Biden’s comments.

“Gird your loins.”—Warning a crowd at a fundraiser that repairing the economy would be a challenge, Seattle, Oct. 20, 2008

“It’s like cleaning the Augean stables, man.”*—Describing the extent of the challenge, Seattle, Oct. 20, 2008

Correction, Oct. 19, 2009: This quote originally misspelled the name of the Augean stables. (Return to the corrected sentence.)