Was Biden right about the consequences of an Obama administration?

Helle Dale:

Democratic vice- presidential candidate Joseph Biden has a well-earned reputation for malapropisms and misstatements. Bidenesque pronouncements such as what President Franklin D. Roosevelt would have told the American people in a televised address about the stock-market crash of 1929 are legion. Another remarkable gaffe, made in the debate with his Republican counterpart Sarah Palin, was that the United States and France had driven Hezbollah out of Lebanon - when in fact Hezbollah remains a force to be reckoned with in the Lebanese parliament.

Yet, once in a while, the loquacious senator from Delaware finds a kernel of truth. It was he who during the Democratic primaries gave us the line that the U.S. presidency is not the place for "on-the-job training." And now Mr. Biden has hit on another extraordinarily important fact about the upcoming presidential election, i.e. that the world is more than likely to see another "major international challenge" within six months if the election is in fact won by Democratic candidate Barack Obama and himself.

Terrorists and enemies of the United States are likely to want to try the mettle of the new and untested president, Mr. Biden said, and he even drew the comparison between Mr. Obama and President Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy, because of his youth and relative inexperience, invited Russian adventurism in the Cuban missile crisis - which brought the world as close to a nuclear standoff between the superpowers as it ever came.

Interestingly enough, Mr. Biden has now joined a number conservatives who have been urgently warning of exactly this scenario over the course of the presidential campaign. An inexperienced leader gives the impression of weakness and always invites trouble, and it is rather hard to see how Mr. Biden can find this a reason to encourage voters to come out for the Democratic ticket.

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The potential for trouble is very real. Iran might well reveal the full extent of its nuclear program, for instance, flaunting it in a test that would send shivers down spines here in Washington and especially in Tel Aviv. North Korea could well follow the path of Iran, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez can be counted on to cause trouble, encouraging populist take-overs in Latin America. Russia might well take a harder line against its former republics.

Al Qaeda might launch another terrorist attack on the United States, and the Taliban may make an even more concerted effort to make a comeback in Afghanistan. As U.S. troops began to leave Iraq, insurgents there could be counted on to revive their cause. Or something entirely unforeseen might challenge the new president, whose international exposure seems to have been mostly acquired in the course of his childhood.

But it is not just inexperience that invites testing. In Mr. Obama's case, there has to be real concern about the number of inconsistencies in his stated positions (sometimes dictated by the audience he is addressing) that leaves it entirely uncertain how he will react on the number of crucial issues. Within a relatively short timeframe, he has reversed himself time and again, leaving foreign actors to guess what his reactions might be - if any - when challenged.

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Perhaps this is why the liberal media has pretty much ignored his comments. They think he is right and they don't want voters to know just how bad an Obama administration will be for a our national security.