Syria.
That’s where experience shows. Substance vs slogans and substance won.
Good on Joe.
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Whatever Works 
Yes….Now if his Boss can match him…..
And Bill Clinton, eh?
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Um…Let me see; Biden implied strongly that the we were bypassing the UN and providing arms and training to Syrian rebels.
Unless that disclosure was cleared with Intel, the Pentagon, and the State Dept., that’s not good performance. Leaking things in order to seem more knowledgeable is not a good thing.
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What we’re doing in Syria has been public for some time. Most of our stuff is going thru Saudi Arabia, who are terrified of having two more powerful Shia countries; they think Syria will go like Iraq. We’re also supporting Jordan and a few others.
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No, it hasn’t been “officially” public, just assumed due to it being our normal behavior (I know that very well). Biden put an official stamp on it that knocks holes in Plausible Deniability, a hallmark of diplomacy and foreign relations.
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I personally thought that the strongest moment was on the topic of abortion, because it was one of the clearest contrasts between the two tickets out of the whole debate. Ryan was essentially fine with the idea of moving toward a theocratic governing style, and Biden was respecting the division between church and state. In a race where Obama’s numbers have slipped with women voters since the first presidential debate, I think this point resonated in a big, positive way for the Obama campaign.
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It was certainly a point of division but one can hardly claim that those who feel that abortion is murder are, by that opinion, heading the US towards a theocracy.
There are many non-Christians like myself who also hold that opinion or something close to it.
As the Godless are wont to rant, basic morality is not dependent upon a particular theology.
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Understood, but my comment is more based on the way Ryan framed his answer than on his precise stand on “abortion as murder”. The question was specifically about how each man’s religion affected or influenced their positions on abortion, and Ryan said there can be no separation between one’s faith and one’s public life. Biden, on the other hand, said he could practice his faith as a man but keep that faith separate from his legislative decisions. When I see a candidate admitting that he would/could make legislative calls that stem from his faith, even if that would run counter to the faiths (or faithlessness) of other Americans, I get alarmed. I would prefer to see my elected officials using the Constitution to guide them rather than the Bible. That was more or less the place I was coming from with my comment.
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In other words, Biden claims that his faith is meaningless to him and you like that sort of faithlessness in your “leaders?”
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No, I like the fact that a person can live his life as he sees fit and allow others to lead their lives as they see fit. I really don’t care how much Biden’s faith means to him as a private citizen. But as a public official, he is obligated to uphold the law and the Constitution, and if his faith does not allow him to do that then I think he is in the wrong line of work.
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There is rarely a conflict between Christian moral principles and the Constitution, Chris. Our Constitution was predicated upon those Christian principles.
The only point of conflict is the limit upon how far the law should go to regulate anything and that conflict is not, by any stretch of the imagination, limited to the normal, religious people. The Godless are at least as likely to call for such over-reaches.
But, in any case, if a man will break faith with his God(s), he will even more quickly break faith with any and all mortal agencies and, if he be a politician, is certainly in the wrong line of work.
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“The only point of conflict is the limit upon how far the law should go to regulate anything and that conflict is not, by any stretch of the imagination, limited to the normal, religious people. The Godless are at least as likely to call for such over-reaches.” – No argument there, but since this was a discussion of abortion specifically, I think it’s pretty common knowledge that this particular issue is addressed legislatively about 99.9% of the time by those whose opposition to Roe v. Wade is based on religious dogma.
“if a man will break faith with his God(s), he will even more quickly break faith with any and all mortal agencies and, if he be a politician, is certainly in the wrong line of work.” – I don’t think Biden is breaking faith with his God. He’s not planning to have an abortion, I’m guessing, nor did he personally legalize abortion in this country. He’s upholding the right of everyone else to break faith with THEIR God if that applies to them and if that’s what they choose to do, and that’s about it.
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Chris, you have it exactly right. Biden’s faith has been central to his life but not to his role as part of government. And that is as it should be. And jonolan, as for our Constitution being based on Christian principles . . . that’s not untrue but it’s irrelevant for two reasons. One of course is the establishment clause, which is the core of separation and the legal framework – then, and now. The second is that at the time of the founding in the 1700’s, as we were Western Civilization, it was all we knew. The entire Western world was Christian and the accumulated law of a millenium was informed by that. We are no longer that world or that nation. And the establishment clause has made it possible for government to remain secular.
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Overnight, the term “malarkey” set up shop in my vocabulary.
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I think it’s a-buzzin’ throughout digital-land!
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