Senator Obama chose another, and less impressive, senator as his running mate. Much sport will be had at the expense of Joe Biden, a gaffe-prone, entrenched incumbent.
Look at him seriously, though, and you find something worse: a career politician who has neither time nor understanding for limited government.
David Boaz recalls Biden’s theatrics in 1991 during the Clarence Thomas nomination hearings:
“Biden bore in on the possibility that Thomas might believe in “natural law,” the idea, as Tony Mauro of USA Today summarized it, that “everyone is born with God-given rights – referred to in the Declaration of Independence as ‘inalienable rights’ to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ – apart from what any law or the Constitution grants.”
Biden singled out Cato adjunct scholar Richard Epstein and Cato author Stephen Macedo…and demanded to know if Thomas agreed with them that the Constitution protects property rights.”
One could hold a strong property rights view with or without a religious belief.
One cannot easily hold a strong property rights view and still countenance widespread government interference in private affairs.
Poor Joe Biden: smart enough to see that strong property rights might inhibit government spending and scheming, but not smart enough to see that those rights are a part of his country’s foundation of liberty.
Obama could have done better.
Boaz’s telling anecdote is available at
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/08/24/joe-biden-and-limited-government/