Joe Biden and the Barack Obama campaign didn't like the fact they were not thrown 'softball' questions, by WFTV, in a recent interview with Joe Biden, so they canceled the following interview with Jill Biden and do not plan on allowing WFTV any more interviews.
WFTV-Channel 9's Barbara West conducted a satellite interview with Sen. Joe Biden on Thursday. A friend says it's some of the best entertainment he's seen recently. What do you think?
West wondered about Sen. Barack Obama's comment, to Joe the Plumber, about spreading the wealth. She quoted Karl Marx and asked how Obama isn't being a Marxist with the "spreading the wealth" comment.
"Are you joking?" said Biden, who is Obama's running mate. "No," West said.
West later asked Biden about his comments that Obama could be tested early on as president. She wondered if the Delaware senator was saying America's days as the world's leading power were over.
"I don't know who's writing your questions," Biden shot back.
Biden so disliked West's line of questioning that the Obama campaign canceled a WFTV interview with Jill Biden, the candidate's wife.
According to Laura K. McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama campaign, "This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election."
The reason McGinnis cited for this decision was because of the "experience" Joe Biden had when he was asked some tougher-than-expected questions.
WFTV news director Bob Jordan said "Mr. Biden didn't like the questions. We choose not to ask softball questions."
More news on Biden comes to us via LA Times' Top of the Ticket's Andrew Malcolm, who shows that when it comes to access to him from the press, Biden has been muzzled by the Obama campaign.
Democratic votes anyway, Biden's probably right. Look how well he did during the Democratic primaries. Sure wasn't an 18 million-vote-getter.
And Biden has not held a press availability since Sept. 7, three days before that gaffe, on his plane en route to Big Sky Country.
That means for almost seven of the eight weeks between the Republican convention and the Nov. 4 election Biden's been gagged to the media. How much of a plus can this guy be to the over-funded Obama campaign if he's forbidden from chatting up even his own media crowd?
And if he's so ready to become president in a skipped heartbeat, what conceivable crowd questions are so scary they've, in effect, been forbidden? Besides "Do you think Hillary Clinton should have won?"
Politicians don't usually go missing like that until after they've become vice presidents.
Then Malcolm points out that Biden also has not taken questions from the audiences of his rallies since he made that fateful comment about Hillary Clinton "might" have made a better vice presidential pick for Obama, back on Sept. 10, 2008. (Video here)
More from Top of the Ticket:
Tapper notes, fairly, that a Biden spokesman (is that job really necessary under the circumstances?) disagrees with that assessment. But then the political veteran adds: "in terms of general availability to their traveling press corps, Biden's and Palin's roles are switching."Does anybody seriously think that if the trend was going the other way, we would not have heard by now endless accounts of her hiding?
ABC News' Political Punch recently confirmed that Palin has become much more accessible to the press than both Obama and Biden.
Truly I cannot blame the Obama campaign here since almost everything Biden does say publicly has been able to be used against Obama in a spectacular manner.
For example, the Hillary Clinton remark, his clean coal comments last month and his most recent gaffe informing supporters and getting caught on audio, that electing Barack Obama will cause an "international crisis" within the first six months of his presidency as he is "tested".
Perhaps they are right to keep Biden muzzled.
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