ONE HEARTBEAT AWAY

Posted at 11:38 p.m. ET

Most stories with that title have, during this bizarre campaign, been about Sarah Palin.   We've been assured by certain journalists that she has no qualifications at all to serve as vice president, president, or even human being.  Why, there has never been anyone so low.

But where are the stories about Joe Biden?  Have you seen a single story question a single vote he's cast in the Senate?  Has anyone noticed, during this financial crisis, that he represents Delaware, known as the headquarters of many major financial institutions?  Any interest in his relationship with them, or how that relationship has been nurtured?

Well, finally, a real newspaper, The Washington Times, has printed an analysis of Biden's years in the Senate.  And now we can understand why the liberal media don't want to go anywhere near this?

The conduct of our foreign relations and the command of our military are among the most important functions entrusted to the president under our Constitution, and Mr. Biden's record in these areas is abysmal. From his first year in the Senate in 1973, he was a consistent foe of the American military.

Nice to know that.  Where else is it being printed?

When the Armed Services Committee recommended money for the Trident submarine, the B-1 bomber, and the MX missile (three critical upgrades to our strategic nuclear deterrent triad), Mr. Biden voted against all three - as well as against every effort by our military to protect the American people against nuclear missile attack. When the Senate voted to provide our troops with superior equipment like the M-1 Abrams tank, Joe Biden regularly voted "nay." He even voted to make all covert operations illegal (and to prohibit all intelligence collection inside foreign countries where local laws prohibited foreign espionage) and in 1986 bragged he had personally undermined Reagan administration covert operations while a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee by simply threatening to "leak" them.

Nice, huh?  This is the "qualified" candidate for vice president.

A look at his actions when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 is instructive...

...He declared the United States "must act, and we must act forcefully. ... History will not forgive us if we do not do everything in our power to stop Saddam Hussein."

Two months later, his courage had apparently waned, as Mr. Biden cautioned that the United States should not engage in a "pre-emptive strike."

And it gets worse:

As for his earlier concerns about Saddam's quest for nuclear weapons and Iraq's other weapons of mass destruction programs, Mr. Biden actually speculated to his colleagues that perhaps, if we just left him alone for five years, Saddam might be "struck by lightning," eliminating any need to deal seriously with the problem. Thus we have the "Biden Doctrine" - gut the military, appease aggressors, and then pray anxiously for lightning to preserve world peace!

It's probably the most coherent piece of thinking Joe ever came up with.

When Desert Storm began, Iraq had the third-largest army in the world (the United States was fifth). Without the critically important weapons Mr. Biden had sought to deny our troops, we might well have paid for his frugality with the lives of large numbers of brave American men and women in uniform.

He would have just blamed BUSH (!) - the first Bush.

Apparently having learned from experience, in 2002 Mr. Biden voted in favor of going to war in Iraq. (As late as April 2003, a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll reported 79 percent of Americans still thought the Iraq war was justified). But when public opinion shifted, Mr. Biden quickly reverted to form, declared his vote was a "mistake," and tried to sabotage the president's conduct of the war (and thus guarantee victory for our enemies, as he had done in Indochina in May 1973).

This admission probably endeared him to The One.

Today, few Senate Democrats can match Joe Biden's experience in the field of foreign affairs. He has a long track record dating back 35 years - a record Mr. Obama obviously admires. But it is a record of appeasement, weakness, vacillation and incredibly poor judgment. It is a record of usurping the constitutional powers of the president, undermining and trying to cripple our intelligence community, and in the process betraying the brave sacrifices of millions of our men and women in uniform. I have testified at hearings chaired by Mr. Biden time and again over many years, and I've always found him fair, gracious, and often charming and personable. But the thought that his views may soon become the foreign and defense policies of this great nation genuinely frightens me.

Should frighten all of us.

October 26, 2008.