Two Irishmen Step Onto a Stage, a Third Creams His Knickers

Two Irishmen step onto a stage - one Liberal, one Conservative - both filled to the brim with blarney, political and otherwise.

One lies, one gaffes.

A noted political commentator, himself of Irish extraction and from the Left, elevates his hero to near-deified proportions.

Charles Pierce writes:-

One of the oddest reactions to the president's feather-in-the-gales-of-pure-bullshit performance last week is the notion among a number of very smart liberal humans that he doesn't want to be president anymore and, way out on the fringe, the corollary that his debate demeanor was the rhetorical equivalent of Eddie Cicotte of the Chicago White Sox hitting the first Cincinnati batter he faced in the 1919 World Series. I'm not good enough at trans-area-code psychology to agree with this conclusion, although I do admit that the president should be a little more juiced than this about the prospect of deflating Willard Romney just for the sheer fun of it, since Romney is so obviously a bag of hot air that they should string him up and float him through Manhattan this Thanksgiving. 

However, you know who really likes his job, and would like very much to keep it because he likes it so much? 

Joe Biden, that's who. 

Joe Biden is not riven with self-doubt. Joe Biden is not exhausted by the hurly-burly of politics. Joe Biden is not burdened by the weight of events and laid low by the constant battle against know-nothing obstructionism. Joe Biden is not going to take the stage tonight and find himself wishing he were anywhere else. I mean, god be good to him, as my gran' used to say, but Joe Biden actually likes all these silly performance pieces in which we insist he be engaged in order to stay vice-president. He revels in them. He would do ten of them a day, if he could. When I consider Joe Biden, and I look at the enthusiasm with which he throws himself into the various cataracts and torrents of hogwash that constitute our politics these days, I find myself looking at him the way I look at people who sky-dive or drive in demolition derbies. I have no idea why they do what they do, and I have absolutely no intention of doing it myself, ever, but, goddamn, do those people look like they're having fun.  

So tonight, when Biden takes the stage to debate Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin, it is very unlikely that the debate will hinge on whether either man really wants to be there. Biden eats these kinds of things on toast, and Ryan is as ambitious as Satan. 

 As much as I agree with the rest of this article, I do disagree with Pierce's downplay of the President's character, even subtly pushing the notion that the President doesn't want the job anymore. I mean, is there anyone else who'd like to surmise that he wants to "throw" this election for whatever reason?

Pierce is a Clintonista, just like his bumchum Joan Walsh. Nothing Barack Obama could ever do would sit right with them, so they'll just hunker down and wait until 2016 when Hillary's phoenix rises again. But just hark unto the tone of this missive - Pierce is positively orgasmic at the thought of two Irishmen in the thick of the equivalent of a barroom brawl. All that's missing is the brogues and the Guinness.

However, Pierce (and Walsh) shouldn't underestimate the President's desire or his abilities, and if Pierce had really really really wanted to do so, he's certainly intelligent enough to have recognised and to have imparted in this piece that the President said a lot of things and Romney said a lot of nothing, just bullied and talked louder all around.

But then, I guess Obama, who's got Irish blood, himself, just isn't Irish enough for Charles Pierce.

I wonder why?