Fom April, 2019: Time; Why Joe Biden’s First Campaign for President Collapsed After Just 3 Months . . ."Here’s how TIME described why the fallout was so intense: T]he Biden brouhaha illustrates the six deadly requirements for a crippling political scandal.
1) A Pre-Existing Subtext. “The basic rap against Biden,” explains Democratic Pollster Geoff Garin, “is that he’s a candidate of style, not substance.”
2) An Awkward Revelation. The Kinnock kleptomania was particularly damaging to Biden since it underscored the prior concerns that he was a shallow vessel for other people’s ideas.
3) A Maladroit Response. Top Aide Tom Donilon claimed that Biden failed to redit Kinnock because “he didn’t know what he was saying. He was on autopilot.”
4) The Press Piles On. Once textual fidelity became an issue, reporters found earlier cases in which Biden had failed to give proper citation to Humphrey and Robert Kennedy. By themselves these transgressions would not have been worth noting.
5) The Discovery of Youthful Folly. During his first months at Syracuse University Law School, in 1965, Biden failed a course because he wrote a paper that used five pages from a published law-review article without quotation marks or a proper footnote. Since Biden was allowed to make up the course, the revelation was front-page news only because it kept the copycat contretemps alive.
6) An Overwrought Press Conference. With a rambling and disjointed opening statement, Biden failed to reap the benefits of public confession, even though he called himself “stupid” and his actions “a mistake.” Part of the problem is that he contradicted himself by also insisting that it was “ludicrous” to attribute every political idea.
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