When Barack Obama selected Joe Biden to be his running mate, he knew--just like he knew about the hair plugs and that we’d all be hearing about the quiet dignity of riding the Amtrak--that there’d be times when Biden would stray hopelessly off-message. But there’s off message, and then there’s off-message. So, we’ve created the Biden Gaffe-O-Meter to rate just how damaging a particular slip of the tongue is, with a 1 being not at all damaging, and a 10 meaning that he should remove himself from the ticket and take out a full page apology in The New York Times for insulting the handicapped children of the world and the ghost of Mahatma Gandhi.
"I thought that was terrible, by the way. I didn't know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we'd have never done it," he told the CBS “Evening News” in reference to this Obama-Biden ad.
"If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where Bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me. ... Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are," he said to the National Guard Association. (According to ABC News, Biden's helicopter was forced down by a snowstorm).
Right now, the first quote is the lead story on Drudge and is getting much cable news time, and the second quote, again as Mike said, could teeter into Hillary-in-Bosnia territory. We’ll have to see…
Today’s Biden Gaffe-O-Meter Rating: 7.5.
Check back for future updates.