"Loudmouth Joe" on Foreign Policy Issues

US Sen. Joe Biden's hairpin departure from Democratic loudmouth to party sage was apparently fueled by one thing and one thing only: the perception that he's an "old hat" at foreign policy.

While this may be true, there's a long way to fall between experience and proficiency. Clearly, Barack Obama couldn't tell the difference, but it's too late for him to backtrack now. It will only be a matter of time before Obama finds himself putting out Biden's fires and clearing up his remarks.

Biden's a gregarious Democrat, a dumbed down version of LBJ, as I've said before. But LBJ didn't live in a 24-hour news cycle, and politicians were different then. As devious and despicable as LBJ could be, he was shrewd enough to keep his yap shut when it mattered most. LBJ crushed Goldwater in the 1964 election by staying loose, quiet and sober and by dropping large bombs on his competition.*

It was foreign policy that proved to be LBJ's undoing in 1968, and it will no doubt be foreign policy -- by way of Biden -- that undoes Obama in 2008.

When the dust settles from this year's Democratic National Convention, and voters finally have a chance to take a closer look at Biden's foreign policy record, they'll wonder what in the world Obama was thinking.

* This is meant both literally and figuratively, considering many people maintain to this day that it was the infamous "Daisy" TV commercial that nailed Goldwater's campaign coffin shut and kept the so-called warmongering Republicans out of office for the next four years.