Keith Koffler asks the right question: Is Biden fit to be president?

The Vice President’s primary responsibility is to be in place should something happen to the president.  This is not a far-fetched scenario.  Over America’s long presidential history, several Vice Presidents have ascended to the presidency.  Since WWII, we’ve had three presidents come in that way:  Truman, LBJ, and Ford.  The Veep is an understudy for the big role.

The media and the internet have been abuzz today about Biden’s performance.  True believers enjoyed seeing his raging performance.  Looked at objectively, though, with the eye of someone who wandered in from Mars and turned on the TV, Joe’s behavior was nothing short of rude and demeaning, not just to his obvious target, Paul Ryan, but also to the American people.  Biden intentionally hijacked an opportunity for Americans to hear candidates talk at some length about issues that are important to voters.  By interrupting Ryan at least 82 times, by talking over him, by asserting that every fact was a lie without ever addressing the underlying ideological issues, Biden turned the affair in a pointless exercise, with a nice young man being confronted by a crazy dude.

I won’t be the first one to quote Proverbs 29:9 here, as I’ve received multiple emails about blog posts raising it: “When a wise person debates with a fool, the fool rages and laughs, and there is no peace and quiet.” Or as I sum it up, “Never argue with the crazy person.”

Of course, that assumes that Biden is either crazy or a fool. Perhaps he is a calculating man who covered up a giant vacuum in his party’s platform by raging in Khrushchev style (or lawyer style): When you have the law, argue the law; when you have the facts, argue the facts; and when you have neither law nor facts, pound the table.

Regardless of his motivation, though, Joe was thumbing his nose at our democracy. He was denying us the substance we deserve. He was either unstable, which is a problem; or profoundly dishonest of and disrespectful to democracy, which is also a problem. And so Keith Koffler asks Is Biden Fit To Be President?

Biden’s act last night raises very serious questions about his fitness to serve as president should it ever come to that.

And it was an act. It’s clear to me that the giggling, the sneering, and the occasional indignant outbursts were carefully rehearsed, a calculated attempt both to diminish Ryan and throw some red meat to a dispirited Democratic base. “Yeah, get him, get the little jerk,” you can hear lefties across America snorting as Biden tore into the despised Ryan.

That the vice president of the United States could put together a performance that was just one step short of Nikita Khrushchev pounding his shoe on a desk at the United Nations should be deeply disturbing to average Americans.

Though calculated, Biden’s outlandish behavior and his uncanny ability to pull it off belongs nowhere near the West Wing of the White House. Unless Biden’s debate prep partner was Al Pacino and the practice sessions were rehearsed at the Strasberg school for method acting in New York City, the behavior you saw last night has to be part of who Biden is: A crude, angry bully who may be a borderline lunatic.

Americans need to ask themselves not who won the debate, but whether they want such a man in charge of an office whose occupant steers the the future of the human race and, quite possibly, its fate.

Read the rest here to see what Koffler has to say about Ryan’s performance.