It’s just not fair. Our sassy and vivacious Vice President is about to get smushed by his younger, smarter, wittier, more able, more fit, more handsome, more charismatic, more knowledgeable, more prepared, more everythingish rival for the job.
Look away. Send the children out of the room. But on the other hand…
Doesn’t everybody like Joe? I sure do. Pert and perky without a mean bone in his body. Whether he’s making a routine fool of himself or a very big fool when he’s in over his head, it’s all good, it’s Joe. Rides the same train to work in DC every day for decades as the Senator from Delaware, just another commuter. Hey, howya doin’, Joe, thumbs up, a wink. Good man.
Uh oh. Here comes Paul Ryan. Elected to Congress at age 28, VP nominee at 42, that mean, hungry look in his eye. Not only understands the budget, he’s the only man in Washington who could actually write his own budget, he actually did—wonkier than the wonkiest wonk, and wonkage is the Democrat game, a serious cat. Attila the Republican.
It’s not whether he’ll smash up poor pert and perky Joe Biden, it’s only how many pieces. 10, 20, 50, 1000?
So I think of Gerry Spence, master trial lawyer. Screw representing Dow at $700 an hour if you can sue ’em and get a third of a multi-million dollar verdict. [Do the math. How many million hours in a year?]
Plus, as a plaintiff’s lawyer, you’re permitted a little flair, it’s expected: Gerry Spence is this guy, buckskin and fringe, a legend in the plaintff’s bar and in American lawyerdom.
Story is, in his earlier days, Gerry has this unloseable case, a pooch that can’t be screwed, and takes it to jury trial. He has the greatest time in the world, delighting in his own brilliance:
When I was a young lawyer feeling my power, my strategy in a
certain case was to attack and destroy every witness the other side
put against me. I took on the witnesses, old men with watery eyes
who I knew were but company sycophants trying to keep their jobs. I
took on the experts, scholarly actors who I knew were but paid
witnesses attempting to earn their fees rather than reveal the
truth. Cut them up, shredded them, pulverized them.The jury was out only fifteen minutes before it returned a verdict against my
client.I was devastated. Hadn’t I won every battle? Hadn’t I destroyed the witnesses?
Hadn’t my power on cross-examination been overwhelming?As the jury was filing out of the courtroom, one of the women approached me. She looked up at me with tears in her eyes. It was obviously hard for her to turn my severely injured client out of a court of justice with nothing.
“Mr. Spence,” she said quietly, “why did you make us hate you so?”
So if I’m Joe Biden’s cornerman, I say just let the Ryan kid talk. Just be Joe Biden, the guy on the train who everybody likes, good man. There’s more than one way to skin a cat—especially a serious cat feeling his power—and the best way is to let him do all the work. They already like you, Joe, and the only one who can make them hate Paul Ryan is Paul Ryan. So do not stand in his way.
“The hammer is my…”