The perils of quoting a standing joke

Nick Thomas
They do things differently in the United States. When Tony Blair gave the ham-fisted, ludicrous John Prescott the empty title of Deputy Prime Minister back in 1997, it was in order to keep onside the ranks of workbig class party members and MPs whose trust he bad just begun to abuse, not to boost the credibility of his administration. Indeed the national prestige of the Project could only be dented by Prezza's nominal inclusion, but it was a price worth paying for the suppression of grass roots rebellion.
Contrast Barack Obama's choice of Joe Biden as his running mate for November. The Washington old-timer has been selected for a role of genuine importance, but not because he'd be any good at it (which he certainly would), but because he is deemed to fill the gaps in the presidential nominee's clout in the eyes of the American people: seniority, experience and knowledge of foreign affairs. So the young Kennedy clone (to some) has a junior 20 years his elder, who could hardly aspire to inherit his party's nomination for the presidency in eight years' time.
Naturally the McCain camp is even now trawling through some of the disobliging things that were said about Senator Obama by those who are now on his side, during a selection process whose bitterness may yet prove lethal to his chances, for reiteration on the airwaves over the next three months: as the Republican strategist Scott Reid observes, "the beauty to this message is that you're using the Democrats' own words." True enough. But if they're going to use anything Joe Biden said, they'd better make sure it was his in the first place. For it was Senator Biden who, in 1988, had to apologise for plagiarising a speech by Neil Kinnock, which until last week was the only reason a few people over here had heard of him.
That little incident, now two decades old, of course hurts the senator not at all on his home turf. Compared to some of,the stuff American politicians get up to it is no great sin to have pinched a line from a foreign party leader and subsequent European Commissioner. But that's because Americans are not much interested in political establishments other than their own, and have no idea how embarrassing it is to have filched a risible rhetorical stroke from one of the most vacuous and inept demagogues in British political history. It would have been no less laughable to imitate the man's voice or hairstyle. It was like stealing a short story from Jeffrey Archer.
"Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?" asked the freckled firebrand, during a speech in Llandudno in 1987. "Because there weren't any in the late Stone Age," came the answer, from a press corps already seasoned in jeering at the Labour leader's turn of phrase. ("We didn't want to beat our chests, because that would have looked like whistling in the dark" is another of my favourites. I could go on.) It has to be said that Joe Biden can't have been such great shakes at the foreign affairs game if he didn't know he was quoting a man who was a standing joke in his own country (it was around then that Kinnock found himself uncomfortably detained while abroad
because the local flatfoots couldn't bring themselves to believe his claim to be Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition): and he would certainly be unable to set foot on British soil as Vice President of the United States without suffering a chorus of heartless derision from the hacks.
Oh well. Joe Biden doesn't have to worry about his credibility on this side of the Pond. If the Democrats win in November he is unlikely to be given a roving ambassadorial role by the boss, because his long managerial experience will be needed in Washington, while Obama jets around. exercising his talent for oratory before the adoring audiences of the world. Of course, Brown and Yliliband will almost certainly still be in place, a reflection that does make the heart sink somewhat — especially because they're both even worse orators than Kinnock. If they started quoting the old Welsh windbag to ginger up their speeches, we'd probably thank them.