Joe Biden, the man whose tenure in the U.S. Senate has been succeeded by only 26 others in American history, reached the scheduled campaign stop, then plopped down on the plush grass.
The presidential campaign venue was set up in the Sioux City backyard of Carl and Ann James, and Biden's first act was to take a seat on the grassy incline.
"You guys are standing. Come on, sit up on the lawn -- I am," Biden said. "This is my idea of how we should do politics." At least a dozen people took him up on it.
Despite the laid-back seating, Democrat Biden's comments on how he would seek the presidency were quite strident. He currently runs behind the front-polling pack of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, but Biden said if he becomes the party's nominee in 2008, he would not let himself get smeared and run cautiously.
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"I'm not going to take it. You take a shot at me, and I'm going to give a straight left," Biden said.
He said it will take more than courting the Democratic Party base to win, that pulling in independents is crucial. Further, Biden said he was the sole person in the field with the ability to "win in Red (typically Republican) states, who can compete and win in 15 Red states."
In the one-hour stop, most of Biden's remarks concerned his plans to get the U.S. out of the war in Iraq, which he said could only be achieved if Iraq is partitioned.
"This war has got to end," Biden stated, then added that's the unanimous position of all the Democrats running for president. But in order for the U.S. to pull out without chaos ensuing, he said, it would require a plan that addresses the reality of the tribal split in Iraq. The Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds would have to be partitioned, not into three nations, but giving the three sects local control over their daily lives, such as in each having their own police forces, he said.
"There is no possibility ... for you to see a strong central government in Baghdad. It will not happen," he said.
Pat Hammerstrom of Sioux City said, "I like your plan for partitioning Iraq, but it won't make sense unless the Iraqis buy it."
Biden said most important in getting the Sunnis, who live in a desolate and poor area without oil, to support the government would be to put in place a sharing of oil revenue.
Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the Iraq war has "created more terrorists" than it has claimed. That's not just his position, he added, it was the finding of an National Intelligence Estimate in February.
Biden predicted that any U.S. senator who by next summer still maintains support for 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq would be a senator going down to re-election defeat. "We've got to get our kids out of the middle of this civil war," he said.
On the nation's 231st birthday, when several presidential candidates were campaigning in Iowa, Biden was the only candidate to visit Sioux City. Woodbury County Democratic Party chairwoman Teresa Wolff called the stop a nice event on America's Independence Day, particularly since "Senator Biden goes back with a lot of people in Sioux City." He demonstrated that, calling out names to many familiar faces among the 50 attendees.
In addition to Iraq, the other major topic Biden touched on dealt with becoming energy independent by the year 2020. Gas prices are near $3 per gallon and the Delaware senator said the U.S. needs a major national energy program along the lines of the 1960s Apollo space program. He said he would divert federal money from tax breaks for oil companies to pursue alternative energy and to reduce consumption as well.
Further, Biden said at a time when global warming is settled science, unless greenhouse gas emissions are greatly reduced, the sea level will rise by 3 feet in a few decades, which would put several Delaware seaboard counties under water. He targeted reducing greenhouse gases by 80 percent.
Bret Hayworth may be reached at (712) 293.4203 or brethayworth@siouxcityjournal.com
