If the prospect of Joe Biden sitting a heartbeat away from the presidency doesn't give you palpitations, you are not paying attention.
Hysterical Sarah Palin-bashers on the unhinged left and elitist right have dominated campaign press coverage and pop culture. They've ridiculed her family, her appearance and her speech patterns. They've derided her character and intellect.
Meanwhile, the increasingly erratic, super-gaffetastic Joe Biden gets a pass.
Throughout the primary and general election cycles, Biden has lurched from attacking Obama as not ready for prime time ("The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training." -- September 2007) to ready to lead ("Barack Obama is ready. This is his time." -- August 2008).
Last week Biden warned America that an Obama victory would invite a dangerous global showdown between tyrants and the naif Obama. "Mark my words," Biden said at a Democrat fundraiser. "It will not be six months (after the inauguration) before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy." In a follow-up appearance, he told supporters to brace for the worst and "gird your loins."
Out of Biden's mouth, this is called candor. Out of anyone else's mouth, it would be "fear-mongering," "negative campaigning" and a "distraction."
Tooting his own horn while vandalizing his running mate's, Biden bragged: "I've forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know." Yeah. Colleagues like that guy who had a mere 143 days of Senate experience before launching his presidential bid and choosing you to shore up his meager credibility, Joe.
In fact, Biden has spent the entire campaign questioning his running mate's judgment. Last month, he mused out loud: "Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more than I am to be vice president of the United States of America ... and quite frankly it might have been a better pick than me." How many times have late-night comedians and cable shows replayed the video of senior statesman Biden's own spelling mishap last week while attacking McCain's economic plan⢠"Look, John's last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the No. 1 job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S."
No, Joe. "D'-O-H" is a three-letter word.
Nightly news shows still haven't tired of replaying Palin's infamous interview with Katie Couric. But how many times have they replayed Biden's botched interview with Couric last month -- in which he cluelessly claimed: "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"
Roosevelt wasn't president and there was no TV when the market crashed in 1929.
During the lone VP debate, Biden demonstrated more historical ignorance: "Vice President Cheney's been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history," he said. "He has the idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the executive -- he works in the executive branch."
Article 1 of the Constitution defines the role of the legislative branch.
Biden is worse than a blunderbuss. He's an incurable narcissist with chronic diarrhea of the mouth. He's a phony and a pretender who fashions himself a foreign policy expert, constitutional scholar and worldly wise man. He's a man who can't control his impulses.
And he could be a heartbeat away.
Michelle Malkin is author of "Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild."
