Voting in a Supremely important election -- Sept. 24, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

I voted. As a reporter, I’ve never put a campaign sign in my yard, donated time or given even a dime to any candidate.

But I always vote. So, six weeks before Election Day, I voted early and in person -- no excuse necessary. Voters in Virginia used to need an acceptable reason to vote absentee. Fortunately, that’s no longer the case.

People were already in line – masked and socially distant – before the Alexandria election office opened at 8 on sunny Tuesday morning. I came back about an hour later. The line was longer, and again I passed by. But I was antsy to do my civic duty. I walked back.

The third time, oddly, there was no line. I walked in, showed my driver’s license and received a Registration Verified tag which I exchanged for my paper ballot. A staffer led me to the freshly wiped-off voting booth, and I filled in my choices, staying within the boxes. It took only a couple of minutes.

Outside, people again waited in line.

Voters are, to borrow a Democratic campaign slogan from the past: “Fired up! Ready to go!”

For many, the passing of Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the exercise of raw political power by President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to name and confirm a replacement at warp speed adds urgency to voting.

As if choosing the next president weren’t motivation enough, voters also will decide control of the Senate, where a simple majority confirms who will sit on the Supreme Court and other federal courts for life.

Ginsburg served on the court for 27 years. Trump’s first two picks to the Supreme Court – Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh – are in their 50s.

It now appears McConnell has the necessary Republican votes to push a nominee through before the election, despite refusing to allow even a hearing for President Barack Obama’s last nominee in 2016.

Since Trump came to office in 2017, Republicans have made filling judicial seats a priority. Besides the Supreme Court justices, Trump has named 210 other federal judges to lifetime appointments, according to the Federal Judicial Center, the research arm of the federal judiciary. That’s more than one in four federal judges.

The Senate currently has 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats – including two Independents who caucus with Democrats. To win control, Democrats need to pick up three or four seats, depending on who wins the White House. The vice president breaks a tie.

Thirty-five Senate seats are up, including special elections in Arizona and Georgia to replace Republican senators appointed to serve out the unexpired terms of Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who died in 2016, and Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia, who resigned for health reasons at the end of 2019. Republicans are defending 23 Senate seats.

Virginia is viewed as a safe Democratic Senate seat. Democratic Sen. Mark Warner holds a comfortable 19-point lead over Republican challenger Daniel Gade in the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls.

In the Electoral College contest for president, Virginia is Likely Democratic, according to projections by the University of Virginia’s Crystal Ball.

Crystal Ball prognosticators this week moved the critical Senate race in Maine from Toss-up to Leans Democratic and, saying Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina “is in greater danger of an upset,” moved that race from Likely Republican to Leans Republican.

As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Graham’s role in the Supreme Court fight “could save him, though,” the Crystal Ball noted.

Meanwhile, we’re about to enter debate season. The first presidential debate is Sept. 29, with a vice presidential debate Oct. 7. Two other presidential face-offs are scheduled Oct. 15 and 22.

I think most people have made up their minds for president, and the debates won’t change much. If you’re undecided, you can still wait until Nov. 3 to cast your ballot in person at your regular polling place.

Mail-in voting is also an option – just request and mail in your ballot early.

I’ll still watch the debates, glad I put my ballot through the scanner and saw the waving American flag on the screen, indicating my ballot was recorded.

I voted. How about you?

©2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

What Trump in 2016 teaches us about 2020 -- March 21, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

We’re coming up on a milestone, of sorts.

On March 23 four years ago, the first hopeful Republican contender entered the 2016 presidential race.

“The answer will not come from Washington,” he said. It will come “when the American people stand together, and say, `We will get back to the principles that made this country great.’”

Sound familiar? Not exactly. It was Ted Cruz, in a speech to cheering students at Liberty University.

That was in the B.D. era – Before Donald.

As more Democrats line up to run for president, it’s worth remembering what happened when 17 Republicans competed for the presidential nomination.

We know who won. How many of the others can you still name?

Time’s up. They were: Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, George Pataki, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum and Scott Walker.

When Donald Trump jumped in nearly three months after Cruz, he vowed at Trump Tower to “make our country great again” and “have Mexico pay for the wall.”

He also gave a sour taste of things to come when he gratuitously belittled his opponents at their campaign launches.

“They didn’t know the air conditioner didn’t work. They sweated like dogs. They didn’t know the room was too big, because they didn’t have anybody there. How are they going to beat ISIS?” Trump said.

Trump was making a fallacy of false cause argument -- trying to establish cause and effect between unrelated things. Someone’s not knowing the air conditioning was broken at a venue shows absolutely nothing about how he’d do at fighting ISIS. It’s absurd, but catchy.  

Trump laid waste to once-viable candidates one disparaging nickname at a time: “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz, “Liddle Marco” Rubio and “Low Energy” Jeb Bush.

In Cruz’s case, Trump also claimed Cruz’s father was associated with Lee Harvey Oswald before the JFK assassination. Cruz called the allegation nuts and kooky.

“You know, you have to brand people a certain way when they’re your opponents,” Trump said before the Florida primary in March 2016, explaining how to call out Cruz: It’s “Lyin’ Ted,” he said, “L-Y-I-N-apostrophe.”

“We can’t say it the right way,” he said. “We’ve got to go, Lyin’! Lyin’! Ted!”

Moving on to Rubio, he spelled out “L-I-D-D-L-E. Liddle, Liddle, Liddle Marco.”

Trump has an uncanny knack for finding a rival’s soft spot and choosing a nickname that sticks.

He famously labeled Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton “crooked Hillary,” called her “such a nasty woman” in a debate, and at rallies beamed as his supporters chanted, “Lock Her Up.”

Trump’s ad hominem attacks were stupid, wrong and creepily effective.

Now, the 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls are his target.

He reportedly thinks Elizabeth Warren will be the Democrats’ pick and early on dubbed her Pocahontas for her claim of Native American heritage. She has struggled ever since, finally apologizing for saying she was Native American.

Lately, Trump watched Beto O’Rourke’s video announcing his candidacy March 14 and picked up on his expansive hand gestures.

“I think he’s got a lot of hand movement. I’ve never seen so much hand movement. I said, `Is he crazy, or is that just the way he acts?’” Trump told reporters.

It’s only March 2019. O’Rourke has time to tone down the splashy gestures. Not all the Democratic candidates are even in the pool.

Joe Biden is said to enter the race soon. Virginians Terry McAuliffe and Mark Warner are among those weighing a bid.

Meanwhile, Trump is warming up his attack machine. He called Biden Monday “another low I.Q. individual.”

As we saw in 2016, he shut down his rivals before they could introduce and fully define themselves through their actions, ideas and policies.

Trump will try again to set the tone of the presidential campaign with his personal-attack brand of politics, but he doesn’t set the rules.

Voters should pay attention to policies and hold all candidates accountable for glib fallacies and falsehoods.

We can tune out slurs and nicknames for what they are: petty, malicious noise.

And, most important, we can vote.    

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Gina Haspel's secrets need sunlight -- May 10, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

As Gina Haspel tells it, her life was “right out of a spy novel.”

Haspel, President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, joined the agency in 1985 and worked undercover for more than 30 years.  

“From my first days in training, I had a knack for the nuts and bolts of my profession,” she told senators Wednesday at her confirmation hearing. “I excelled in finding and acquiring secret information that I obtained in brush passes, dead drops or in meetings in dusty alleys of third world capitals.

“I recall very well my first meeting with a foreign agent. It was on a dark, moonless night with an agent I had never met. When I picked him up, he passed me the intelligence and I passed him an extra $500 for the men he led. It was the beginning of an adventure I had only dreamed of.”

It sounds like fiction all right, and that’s the way Haspel, 61, wants it.

There’s much the public doesn’t know about her career because the records are classified, and Haspel herself, as acting CIA director, decides how much – or, in this case, how little -- to declassify.

Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who have read the classified material about Haspel but can’t divulge what they’ve read, are frustrated.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the committee, said Haspel has the knowledge and experience for the job, but “many people – and I include myself in that number – have questions about the message the Senate would be sending by confirming someone for this position who served as a supervisor in the counterterrorism center during the time of the rendition, detention and interrogation program.”

Haspel would be the first woman CIA director, and she has bipartisan support from former CIA directors. 

But  more than 90 former U.S. ambassadors and diplomats and more than 100 retired generals and admirals have signed letters, raising concerns about her nomination and the extent of her role in “enhanced” interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, as well as destroying evidence of the activities many call torture.

Most Senate Republicans support Haspel but Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who suffered torture for five and a half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, issued a statement Wednesday night urging the Senate to reject Haspel.

“I believe Gina Haspel is a patriot who loves our country and has devoted her professional life to its service and defense,” McCain said. “However, Ms. Haspel’s role in overseeing the use of torture by Americans is disturbing. Her refusal to acknowledge torture’s immorality is disqualifying.”

In 2002, Haspel ran a CIA “black site” detention facility in Thailand where at least one suspected terrorist was waterboarded repeatedly.

In 2005, as Congress was about to launch an investigation, she advocated destroying more than 90 videotapes of the suspect’s interrogations. At the request of her boss, she drafted a cable ordering the destruction. He sent the cable himself.

Haspel proved a wily witness at her confirmation hearing. Often evasive, she repeatedly said she has a strong moral compass. She dodged questions about her role at the detention center but insisted the techniques were legal and approved by President George W. Bush.

She said she would not restart the “enhanced” interrogation program, even if Trump, who said during the campaign he might bring back waterboarding, ordered her to do so.

“We’re not getting back into that business,” she said.

The committee is expected to vote next week, with a full Senate vote in a few weeks. It appears Haspel may squeak through.

Republicans hold a 51 to 49 Senate majority, but McCain is battling brain cancer in Arizona. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has said he will vote no. But Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia will vote for confirmation, and a couple of other Democrats also facing tough re-election bids may do the same.

Haspel portrayed herself as “a typical middle-class American,” although one with no social media accounts.

It’s time she put more on the table than her spy novel stories. Haspel needs to declassify records of her career, so everyone can judge whether she’s fit for the job.   

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Ka-ching! National parks get only Trump change -- for now -- April 6, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

You’d have thought the National Park Service won the lottery.

The photos of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke holding an oversized check with Tyrone Brandyburg, superintendent of Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, looked like shots of a lucky lottery winner with a gazillion-dollar bonanza.   

But this check to the National Park Service was chump change – or Trump change -- $78,333.32.

That’s how much salary taxpayers have paid Trump since noon Jan. 20. To compare: Taxpayers have shelled out an estimated $10 million on Trump’s visits to Mar-a-Lago.

Candidate Trump vowed he wouldn’t accept a salary as president, but the Constitution requires a president to be paid. The framers thought compensation would keep the president independent and free of corruption.

Until now, only Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy gave their presidential salaries to charity.

Trump initially planned to make a splash by giving away his entire $400,000 salary at year’s end. But the White House changed course and staged the photo op Monday in the press briefing room.

Trump gave the first installment of his salary to the park service, nearly everybody’s favorite federal agency. The money will go towards repairing infrastructure, Zinke said. 

But the sum will hardly make a dent in the $229 million backlog in deferred maintenance on the 25 national battlefields. Overall, the park service has a backlog of $12 billion in deferred maintenance on more than 400 parks and historic sites around the country.

Trump’s budget proposes a cut of $1.5 billion, or 12 percent, from the Interior Department’s budget. It doesn’t specify how much will be cut from the park service.

So, Trump came across not as a generous benefactor to the park service but as a latter-day John D. Rockefeller, handing it a few shiny dimes.

Visits to national parks have been growing over the past decade to a record high of 330 million visits last year during the service’s centennial celebration.

Most park facilities were built in the early and mid-20^th century and need updating or replacing. These include rest areas and visitor centers, wastewater treatment and electricity plants, staff quarters and campgrounds.

Congress has long preferred to create new parks rather than take care of existing ones, but addressing deferred maintenance may be a rare area of bipartisan cooperation in the fractured Congress.

Last year, Congress authorized an additional $90 million for non-transportation maintenance and an additional $28 million for roads and bridges in the parks, with funds rising every year for five years.  

That’s not nearly enough to tackle the enormous backlog, park service officials and fans say.

Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, introduced on March 28 the National Park Service Legacy Act, which would direct $50 million annually in 2018, 2019 and 2020 for deferred maintenance at the parks.

The Legacy Act would authorize increasingly larger sums until $500 million would be available annually from 2027 through 2047. Costs would be paid through revenues from government oil and natural gas royalties.

“Virginia ranks fifth in the list of states with the greatest need for maintenance, with a backlog of $800 million,” said Warner. Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia is a cosponsor.

Republican co-sponsors include Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who wants to help the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which has a $232 million maintenance backlog.

“The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of America’s greatest treasures and it has a tremendous economic impact on East Tennessee,” Alexander said.

The park service does have its critics.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., chairman of the Homeland Security subcommittee on federal spending and oversight, has called out park service projects in Pennsylvania and Alaska as wasteful.

While congressional action is slow, there is something you can do: make a gift directly to the National Park Service, or, if you prefer, to your favorite national park. 

Shenandoah National Park has a $90 million maintenance backlog, for example, and Gulf Islands National Seashore has a $21 million maintenance backlog.

Your gift, like Trump’s, comes with a bonus. It’s tax deductible, if you’re among the 30 percent of taxpayers who itemize.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Running mate's new role: attack and cuddle -- April 28, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Carly Fiorina may be the best thing to happen to Ted Cruz since Dr. Seuss.

In 2013, Cruz, an obscure senator with dreams of the White House, staged a talkathon on the Senate floor against funding the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. During the 21-hour theatrical performance, he read the good doctor’s “Green Eggs and Ham” to his little girls as a bedtime story.

The stunt gained Cruz the national attention he craved among conservatives – and the enmity of fellow senators.

Now, hoping to revive his flagging campaign, Cruz has named Fiorina – his former rival for the Republican presidential nomination and former CEO of Hewlett-Packard -- as his running mate. After losing a string of contests to Donald J. Trump, Cruz hopes this unorthodox move will help him win Tuesday’s primary in Indiana.

Cruz in essence is asking voters to give him a second look in this Year of the Woman’s Card. Even if you don’t like me, he seemed to say Wednesday in Indianapolis, you’ll like her and then maybe you’ll like us enough.  

Fiorina, an adept public speaker, previewed her role in the campaign. She blasted Trump and Hillary Clinton as “two sides of the same coin” and “part of the system,” and she shared a snippet of a made-up song she sings with Cruz’s daughters, ages 8 and 5, on the campaign bus.

“I know two girls that I just adore. I’m so happy I can see them more,” Fiorina sang.

In the past, humanizing a candidate was a job for a candidate’s wife. Attacking the opposition was the VP’s role. Fiorina showed she can punch – and cuddle. That’s a first.

She also could be helpful in California, where she has ties and ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2010. But her home is in Virginia. In 2011, she and her husband Frank bought a $6.1 million mansion on five acres with sweeping views of the Potomac in a gated community in Lorton.

Choosing a running mate used to be almost an after-thought, but that’s changed in recent years. Cruz’s early pick suggests the choice may be especially important this year.

The election is shaping up as a contest between two of the most unloved and distrusted people in America, Trump and Clinton. An appealing running mate could conceivably sway some none-of-the-above people to go to the polls.

So, besides geography, gender, age, ethnicity, ferocity, the wow factor and, yes, even qualifications to step in as president, a running mate’s favorability or comfort level with voters is a factor.

For example, if Trump were to pick John Kasich, someone who actually has experience in Washington, the choice might make Trump less scary to moderate Republicans and dubious independents who lean toward the GOP. Might.

Kasich has said, as he must at this point, that he’s not interested in being anyone’s VP and is developing his own list of running mates. 

Trump has said he won’t announce his choice until he actually wraps up the nomination. But he is dropping tantalizing hints. When a supporter, South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, mentioned on CNN Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin as a possibility, Trump tweeted: “Great job and advice.”

If the election came down to Trump and Clinton in Virginia, some Bernie Sanders supporters and independents leaning Democratic might hold their noses and vote for Clinton if one of their senators, Tim Kaine or Mark Warner, was at her side.

“Kaine is Able, and Warner is Too,” read a headline in National Review a year ago.

Another hot Democratic prospect, with an eye to the Hispanic vote, is Julian Castro, secretary of Housing and Urban Development and a former mayor of San Antonio, Texas. But a Clinton ally once told Politico that Tim Kaine speaks better Spanish than Castro.

While Sanders is laying off staff, Clinton has set her campaign on vetting VP candidates.

“She has told her team she cares less about ideology and personal compatibility than about picking a winner, someone who can dominate the vice-presidential debate and convince Americans that Mrs. Clinton is their best choice,” Patrick Healy of The New York Times reports.

That’s the bottom line: It’s all about winning, and who can help the most.

© 2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Give second chances a chance -- March 31, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Before the New Hampshire primary in 1992, Gov. Bill Clinton denied clemency to a mentally incapacitated death-row inmate and flew home to Arkansas to oversee the execution.

Back then, presidential candidates needed to show they were tough on crime.

Today, they’re tough on the criminal justice system.

Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both favor criminal justice reform. Republican Ted Cruz originally supported reform but has backed off. Reform is one thing about which Donald Trump hasn’t said much.

Interestingly, though, none of the GOP presidential hopefuls in this snarling campaign called Clinton as soft on crime when she proposed ending mass incarceration, reducing sentences for non-violent drug offenders and reforming mandatory sentencing laws.

A rare consensus has developed among Democrats and Republicans that the criminal justice system is, as former Attorney General Eric Holder said, broken. In the 1990s’ War on Drugs, voters wanted to lock up criminals and throw away the key. 

President Bill Clinton signed the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act that created longer mandatory sentences and made felonies of lesser crimes.

Now, with nearly half the inmates in federal prisons incarcerated for drug offenses at a per-inmate cost of nearly $30,000 a year, attitudes have changed. Most people think the law is unduly harsh, locks up too many people -- especially minorities -- costs too much and does not make us safer.

President Barack Obama, who has made criminal justice reform a priority, Wednesday commuted the sentences of 61 nonviolent drug offenders. This brought his total commutations to 248 -- more than the last six presidents combined, the White House said.

 Two Alabama prisoners had their sentences commuted: Ian Kavanaugh Gavin of Eight Mile and Jerome Harris Jr. of Mobile. Both were convicted of intending to distribute crack cocaine and having a firearm in their possession.

Since he has been president, Obama has commuted 92 life sentences. Among them: Dwayne Twane Walker of Charlottesville, Va., who received life for a conviction of conspiracy to distribute cocaine base.

 “The power to grant pardons and commutations…embodies the basic belief in our democracy that people deserve a second chance after having made a mistake in their lives that led to a conviction under our laws,” Obama said in a letter to the prisoners who will be freed.

While he has issued only a fraction of the 10,000 clemency grants for nonviolent offenders Holder predicted last year, Obama vows to do more. The Justice Department’s pardon attorney quit earlier this year because she was frustrated with the slow pace and the backlog of clemency requests.

No one, though, expects clemency to solve our prison problems.

White House Counsel Neil Eggleston wrote on the White House blog: “Clemency is nearly always a tool of last resort that can help specific individuals, but does nothing to make our criminal justice system on the whole more fair and just.”

Reform requires legislation, and some states have taken the lead. In Congress, there’s bipartisan interest, and House Speaker Paul Ryan promises the House will take up reform sometime this year.

Democrats Tim Kaine and Mark Warner of Virginia are among cosponsors of the bipartisan sentencing reform bill in the Senate. Sen. Mike Lee, a conservative Republican from Utah, favors easing mandatory sentencing laws.

Not all are convinced, however. Sen. Jeff Sessions, a conservative Republican from Alabama, is among those who worry that violent criminals might be freed and commit more crimes.

In the 1990s, fear of recidivism motivated the sledgehammer approach to judicial discretion, replacing it with mandatory minimum sentences.

Eight years ago, although he opposed easing sentencing laws, President George W. Bush signed the Second Chance Act, which provides grants to faith-based and other groups to help prisoners train for jobs, fight substance abuse and learn other skills to reenter society.

Since 2009, more than $400 million in Second Chance grants has been distributed, and other federal programs also help offenders get on their feet. Even so, our recidivism record is appalling.

Almost half of federal offenders released in 2005 were rearrested for a new crime or for a violation of supervision conditions within eight years – most within two years, the U.S. Sentencing Commission said in a study released March 9. Of these, almost one-third were reconvicted.

The current epidemic of opioid and heroin addiction is worse than the cocaine epidemic of the 1990s. We need to stop warehousing nonviolent drug offenders and invest instead in prevention, treatment, rehab, education and recovery. We can’t afford to do anything else.

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Why the rush to 2016? -- Aug. 21, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Woo-hoo! She’s heading back to Iowa!

News that Hillary Clinton will attend Sen. Tom Harkin’s steak fry on Sept. 14 set off yet another wave of “she’s in” speculation among her fans.

Clinton has avoided the Hawkeye State since Barack Obama cleaned her clock in the 2008 Democratic caucuses.  She came in an embarrassing third, behind the now disgraced John Edwards.  

But both the queen of Democratic politics and her consort – that’s Bill Clinton -- will speak at Harkin’s 37^th annual steak fry in Indianola, the last before the Iowa Democrat retires. It’s the event of the presidential preseason in Iowa, whose caucuses will launch the nation’s 2016 presidential contest. 

The way Hillary’s supporters see it: If Clinton is going to Iowa, she must be running for president. If she’s running, she’s the Democrats’ runaway choice. And if she’s the Democratic presidential nominee, hello, history.

Whoa, hoss.  We’ve seen inevitable Hillary before, circa 2006. Anything can happen.

The steak fry is a long 18 months before the caucuses, tentatively scheduled for Feb. 1.  The 2016 election – in which there may be a good Republican presidential nominee this time – is more than two years away. Let’s all take a deep breath. Americans don’t do coronations.

Even the most admired woman in America should have to make her case for the presidency to her party.  

Now is the time for Democratic activists to look at their options. Working a few steps from the president for eight years ought to count for something. A vice president used to have a leg up on the competition if he chose to run. 

Biden says he’s weighing his decision, but he’s not gaining traction. He served in the Senate for 36 years, including as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, but none of his former colleagues have endorsed him for president.

   

“It’s Hillary’s moment,” senators say, although many likely would decide, absent Hillary, that it’s Biden’s. One person who speaks highly of Biden is his boss.

“I think Joe would be a superb president,” Obama told Evan Osnos of The New Yorker. “He has seen the job up close, he knows what the job entails. He understands how to separate what’s really important from what’s less important.”

Perhaps most telling was this: “He’s got great people skills. He enjoys politics, and he’s got important relationships up on the Hill that would serve him well,” Obama said. Osnos’ profile of Biden was in the July 28 issue.

Poor Joe. He’s reduced to wishing weatherman Al Roker a happy birthday and cracking wise on the “Today” show.  How about Roker as head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration?

“Look, if I were running the administration or the next one, I’d have you in it,” Biden said Wednesday on the show. “I mean, what the hell?”

And that brings us to Biden’s big challenge. Can he overcome his motor mouth and gaffes?

The good news for Biden is that Americans have short memories and most have forgotten about his brushes with plagiarism in law school and on the presidential campaign trail in 2007. He dropped out after he appropriated phrases from other politicians’ speeches.

In the Obama White House, Biden has worked mainly behind the scenes on foreign policy hotspots, but he could take a more visible role after the midterm elections. If the Senate were to split 50-50, he would be the tie-breaker and power broker.

Two Democrats who apparently see a president in their shaving mirror are Martin O’Malley, governor of Maryland, and Brian Schweitzer, ex-governor of Montana. In addition, if Clinton declines to run, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia and others might step up.

Among Republicans, the smart money is on former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, although he has been almost as coy as Clinton about his intentions. Analysts also mention Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Biden said in February his chances of running for president were 50-50. Having run twice, Biden is taking his time. He says he will campaign for Democratic candidates and raise money around the country, including Iowa and other early presidential states.

Whatever happens, Biden will be in a position to make his case.

©2014 Marsha Mercer