Joe Biden’s satellite interview with anchor-reporter Barbara West of WFTV in Orlando, Fla.
A RECENT INTERVIEW of Joe Biden by Barbara West of ABC affiliate WFTV in Orlando, Fla., is being hailed by folks on the right as a “grilling” featuring questions that the Democratic vice-presidential nominee “couldn’t handle.”
Really? Watch the clip and then consider the following:
UPDATE YouTube removed the original video because of “Terms of Use violations.” I’ve updated this post with a still-working link, thanks to the Orlando Sentinel. Note: The time code noted below may be slightly off because of this.
- West’s first question is a classic “guilt by association” logical fallacy, which we can boil down to “Obama worked for ACORN in the past; ACORN did something bad in the present; therefore, Obama is bad in the present.”
- West’s second so-called question (at 1:07) attempts to trap Biden by misquoting and mischaracterizing Obama’s encounter with Joe the Plumber (himself destined to be a Trivial Pursuit question of the future). First, she states that Obama told Joe he wants to spread Joe’s wealth around. Read what Obama actually told Joe:
Joe: I hear your tax plan is gonna tax me more.
Obama: It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they have a chance for success too. … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.
Obama never said anything about taking money away from Joe. In fact, it turns out Joe is actually eligible for a tax cut under Obama’s plan. No word about that from West. Obama was speaking generally about how the current tax structure disproportionately favors the super-wealthy while real earnings for middle- and lower-class Americans continue to erode, even while workers’ productivity continued to rise over the past decade.
- At 1:13 in the clip, West attempts to juxtapose an unrelated Gallup poll with Obama’s tax plan, which she continues to characterize as wealth redistribution — literally taking money from someone and giving it to another — which is not what Obama is proposing. The additional tax money, which comes only from the very wealthy who have long enjoyed favorable tax treatment by the Republicans, would go to help pay for government services that benefit everyone — including the rich. That’s what we call a social contract, Ms. West, not socialism.
And about that Gallup poll? West neglects to mention the poll was released back in June, long before the financial and credit crisis reared its head, and it became clear to all but the most dogmatic free-market conservatives that the government had abdicated its regulation responsibility. I wonder how people would react today, when so many more realize that only the federal government (basically, all of us and our taxes) can foster the stability the economy sorely needs to recover from the abuses of unregulated greed? A late September Gallup poll found that in a crisis like this, people expect the government to take action. Even John McCain recently proposed the federal government should buy bad mortgages in order to keep people from losing their homes.
A Gallup poll a month after the one West quoted showed consumers weren’t yet experiencing a deeper crisis of confidence in the economy. That’s certainly changed by October, so how well can we expect the even earlier poll to hold given what’s happened since it was taken? Even Gallup questions how far one can extend its poll finding when translated to real-world events. Make sure you read the Commentary section on the Gallup site.
- In a hilarious turn, West tries to spin Obama’s off-the-cuff turn of phrase into a “potentially crushing political blunder.” No matter that “spread the wealth” is a pretty vague expression that can mean any number of things. It doesn’t, by definition, mean wealth redistribution; it can also refer to equalizing opportunity or to investing tax dollars into shared assets that help everyone, such as the nation’s dangerously deteriorating infrastructure, and education. Since it’s clear from the polls that the “Obama is a socialist” narrative isn’t getting any traction, it’s self-evident that his offhand comment to Joe the Plumber isn’t a crushing blunder.
- At 1:34, West whips out the old Marxist aphorism, From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, as if it were some buried secret waiting to be used against Obama. “How is Senator Obama not a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?” she asks. Biden stares back at her, frankly amazed at how vacuous her question is. “Are you joking?” he asks, because she clearly doesn’t understand that any taxation is technically wealth redistribution, so why isn’t she accusing every government on earth of being Marxist?
What I find remarkable is that I watched this interview and came away feeling that West had constructed her questions using logical fallacies and out-of-context facts, and that Biden was amused by her flailing about to try to get a “gotcha” from him.
Contrast that with the questions from Katie Couric that flabbergasted Sarah Palin. Those queries were straightforward — What newspapers do you read? What Supreme Court decisions do you disagree with? Palin simply didn’t have anything to say.
However, if you read the conservatives’ interpretation of the WFTV interview, the intrepid West did solid research, served up the facts and grilled Biden, making him angry and prompting him to dissemble. Or maybe she got the questions from her GOP consultant husband.
People clearly believe what they want to believe, then force the facts to fit their preconceived notions. But it doesn’t happen equally on both sides of the aisle. I believe I’m perfectly capable of applying the same level of analysis to interviews of Palin and McCain. Tough questions are fair, but trumped-up ones give off a certain odor of illogic; West’s questions stink.
Read the comments on this page and see if you’re amazed, as I am, at how many people believe that a tough question is the same as a loaded one (e.g., “Explain how Senator Obama isn’t a Marxist.”).
