In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I'm still working my way through the question I asked at the end of yesterday's post: By the time he was Obama's vice president, Joe Biden wasn't taken seriously. In January, 2014 -- just as the Maidan revolution and the Russian seizure of Crimea were in train -- The Atlantic was quoting Robert Gates, who had been defense secretary under both Dubya and Obama: "I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” former Defense Secretary Robert Gates says of Vice President Joe Biden in his new book coming out later this month. And there's Obama's own estimate : Speaking to a fellow Democrat about Joe Biden being the party’s nominee in 2020, Obama famously warned, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f–k things up.” As a true crime fan, I tend to take the homicide detective's truism that there's no such thing as a coincidence to be a useful epistemological tool. But I...