Caveat Emptor
Vol: 83 Issue: 25 Monday, August 25, 2008
How’s this for dusting off an old saying? “Caveat emptor, quia ignorare non debuit quod jus alienum emit.”
As ‘old sayings’ go, this one is pretty unwieldy — not to mention being enshrined in a dead language. But some human observations transcend both time and translation.
The phrase transliterates as; “Let the purchaser beware, for he ought not to be ignorant of the nature of the property he is buying”, but is best known by the shorter “caveat emptor” — “let the buyer beware.”
I was nothing short of astonished when it was announced that Barack Obama had chosen Senator Joe Biden to be his running mate this November. If the RNC had been tasked with selecting Obama’s running mate, that’s who they would have picked, too.
Obama’s entire campaign has revolved around two central themes: Obama’s ‘superior judgment’ in voting against the Iraq War and Obama’s promise of bringing change to Washington.
The Obama campaign has floated other trial balloons, but he defeated Hillary Clinton in the primaries based on her vote for the Iraq War and by capitalizing on sixteen years of Clinton fatigue with his message of change.
Selecting Biden as his running mate wipes away Obama’s only two real issues. Joe Biden has been in the Senate since Obama was an Indonesian schoolboy — he was first elected to the Senate in 1972 — and Joe Biden voted in favor of authorizing the Iraq War.
The election, Obama said, is about “whether we are going to allow ourselves to watch this country get run into the ground, whether we are going to do the same old things over and over and over again and somehow expect a different result, or whether we are finally going to decide: Not this time.”
(Evidently, that decision has been put off for a later time after all. For now, we’ll do the same thing over again and expect a different result.)
So the whole ‘agent of change’ thing is now as dead as the ‘superior judgment’ thing as Obama shifts gears. So, too, is all the hype about Obama being a different kind of politician.
Biden’s fond of referring to himself as ‘The Guy’ as in; “I’m the guy who, probably in the mind of a lot of Democrats, is, if not the most qualified, then qualified,” he said, while running for president in November 2007.
Or, “I’m the guy who wrote the drug czar legislation,” as he said in July 2004.
Or, “I’m the guy who had two cranial aneurysms,” as he said in November 2006.
But only a week ago, when he was asked if he being considered for the number two spot, he said, “I’m NOT the guy.”
A couple of days later, Biden went out of his way to underscore the point, bringing up the subject himself and telling reporters that, not only had he not been asked, if he WERE to be asked, he would turn it down.
It is fair to assume that when Biden told reporters, “I’m not the guy” he probably knew that he was, and so Biden was probably lying. But when Biden promised that, if asked, he would turn the offer down, there was no probably about it — he WAS lying.
One could argue that a candidate’s first act as vice-presidential nominee is accepting the spot on the ticket.
First you accept, then you run, and hopefully, you win the job, but it all begins when you say ‘yes’ to the offer.
So Biden’s candidacy is predicated either on a lie, or a broken promise.
Hillary Clinton fully expected to be named as vice-president. So did her supporters. As she is fond of repeating, Hillary received more votes in the primaries than any candidate in history.
Setting the caucus states aside, Hillary received a greater share of the individual popular vote than did Barack Obama. Both Clintons are certain that, were Barack Obama not black, Hillary Clinton would have won the top spot on the ticket.
And more importantly, so are the eighteen million Democrats who voted for her.
I don’t blame Obama for not picking Hillary. As vice-president, Hillary would be just one heartbeat away from the Oval Office — Obama’s heartbeat. Not to mention the “buy one, get one free” issue.
Obama was probably right to assume that an Obama-Clinton ticket would end up as three competing presidencies with no vice president — but an Obama-Clinton ticket at least had a chance of making it that far.
Obama-Biden has no chance at all — and the Democrats have only a week to fix it in Denver — or go down in flames in November. Therefore, the coming week should be interesting, to say the least.
Caveat Emptor.
Israel Tour Countdown
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We’ll be counting down the days to the sign up deadline. We’re praying that the Lord will clear away all the obstacles and that you can join us for this once-in-a lifetime trip.
Maranatha!
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