DAVID HARSANYI
It’s not a lie if you believe it.
In a classic episode of Seinfeld, Jerry is accused by his new girlfriend, a police officer, of being a fan of the tacky 1990s soap opera Melrose Place. When Jerry lies and denies it, she suggests putting him on a polygraph to find the truth. In an effort to beat the machine, Jerry seeks the advice of his masterfully mendacious friend, George Costanza, who tells him that his talents can’t be taught — “It’s like saying to Pavarotti, ‘Teach me to sing like you.’” Still, he leaves Jerry with a vital nugget of advice: “. . . Just remember, it’s not a lie if you believe it.”
I think of this bit whenever Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden starts in with one of his folksy tales about growing up in hardscrabble Pennsylvania and listening to his dad’s extraordinarily forward-thinking adages. We’re probably only a few speeches away from Biden recalling how his dad used to sit on the edge of his bed and tell him, “Champ, always remember, transgendered folk are just like the rest of us.”
Biden, after all, isn’t always reliving memories of his own life. And I don’t mean his political life, which is filled with momentous but imaginary accomplishments. I mean that he has a habit of engaging in Walter Mitty-like episodes of delusion that he retells with great élan and specificity.
It wasn’t long ago that Biden was telling a rapt audience at Dartmouth the story of a brave Navy captain who had rappelled down a steep ravine in the mountains of Kunar province in an unsuccessful bid to rescue his comrade. An unnamed general had implored the then-vice president to fly to Afghanistan and personally pin the Silver Star on this captain.
“And everybody got concerned a vice president going up in the middle of this,” a fearless Biden recalled, “but we can lose a vice president; we can’t lose many more of these kids, not a joke.”
Now, don’t fret. Biden is no stranger to peril. During a presidential primary debate in 2007, he told viewers about the time he had been “shot at” during a trip to the Green Zone in Iraq.
In any event, the naval officer in question would not let Biden pin the medal on him. “God’s truth, my word as a Biden,” the former senator said. “He stood at attention, I went to pin him, he said: ‘Sir, I don’t want the damn thing. Do not pin it on me sir, please. Do not do that. He died. He died.’”
The only problem with this moving tale was that Biden never visited Kunar province as vice president nor did he ever pin a silver star on any Navy captain, much less one who refused to accept the honor. Nor, incidentally, had Biden ever been “shot at” by anyone.
The media dug up some vaguely similar tale — an Army specialist who had a medal pinned on him by Barack Obama at the White House — so they could claim that Biden had “misremembered” and “conflated” details. But he’s been doing this kind of thing for decades.
It was Biden whose “soul raged upon seeing the dogs of Bull Connor,” who claimed to have marched in the civil-rights movement. “When I was 17, I participated in sit-ins to desegregate restaurants and movie houses,” Biden told audiences in his first presidential bid. In 2014, he was still going on about how he “got involved in desegregating movie theaters.”
In the real world, Biden was 17 in 1959, and it is exceptionally unlikely, nor is there any evidence, that he had participated in any sit-ins at the local Wilmington cinemas, or anywhere else.
Biden has long imagined himself in the thick of the nation’s greatest civil-rights struggle. During one congressional hearing, Biden told a civil-rights activist that “Joe Biden was a lawyer who did work for the black community, represented the Black Panthers at the time they were burning down my city.”
Joe Biden did neither of these things.
In the real world, Biden spent the decade after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination sucking up to a number of race-baiting segregationists such as James O. Eastland, Herman Talmadge, J. William Fulbright, and Strom Thurmond to further his political career. Biden even created an imaginary friendship with the segregationist George Wallace, who he bragged considered him “one of the outstanding young politicians of America” and gave him a nonexistent award to show his appreciation.
Gee.
All those 47 signatories of the Never Trump National Review issue are beginning to box themselves into a “never Trump, not Biden, either” corner.
Who do they all support?
David French flamed out.
Evan McMullin did, too.
Worse, still, who is going to support all these sit-on-their-ass thinkers who have no visible means of support?
Biden is like Hillary. He’d have no experiences to talk about unless he makes them up. But, you know… Orange Man Bad.