If you get a chance, read the profile of Joe Biden in the New Yorker today.
Biden’s riff on George W. Bush’s soul-reading performance in 2001 (when the idiot in chief looked deeply into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and got “a sense of his soul“), is genius. Biden tells New Yorker reporter Evan Osnos this anecdote about meeting Putin in 2011:
“As I turned, I was this close to him.” Biden held his hand a few inches from his nose. “I said, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.’ ”
“You said that?” I asked. It sounded like a movie line.
“Absolutely, positively,” Biden said, and continued, “And he looked back at me, and he smiled, and he said, ‘We understand one another.’ ” Biden sat back, and said, “This is who this guy is!”
Then there’s another anecdote, back in 1979 when Biden was a young Senator and the son of a Welsh coal miner:
“on one of his first trips to the Soviet Union, he listened to an argument from his Soviet counterpart, and replied, “Where I come from, we have a saying: You can’t shit a shitter.” Bill Bradley, then a fellow-senator on the delegation, later asked the American interpreter how he had translated Biden’s comment into Russian. “Not literally,” the interpreter said.”
Classic Joe.
More classic Joe:
“His smile has been rejuvenated to such a gleam that it inspired a popular tweet during the last campaign: “Biden’s teeth are so white they’re voting for Romney.”
“Joe and Barack were having lunch, and Obama said to Biden, ‘You and I are becoming good friends! I find that very surprising.’ And Joe says, ‘You’re fucking surprised!’