Joe's youthful indiscretion?
Posted: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 12:46 PM by Carrie Dann
From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli
ATHENS, OH –
Joe Biden announced this morning that he has a criminal past, a stunning disclosure that could change the dynamics of the race with just three weeks until Election Day.
Or ... maybe it was just another case of Joe Biden being Joe Biden.
Speaking near the campus of Ohio University, the Delaware senator recalled his last visit to the area, and a youthful indiscretion that occurred then.
“I shouldn’t admit this on national television,” Biden began. He and his fellow Blue Hens had come to Athens for a football game, he explained, and stayed around afterward. He met two “young women” who were heading back to their dorms.
“I said, ‘Well I’ll come with you.’ And they said, ‘okay,’ and I walked into their dormitory,” he said. “And [I] was immediately accosted by a cop who arrested me, because back in those days men were not allowed in women’s dormitories.”
As the crowd, which included many students, laughed, he cautioned: “I promise you I never breached the first floor, and it was only a temporary detention. But that’s what I most remember about Athens.”
It wasn’t clear if Biden was actually arrested; he’s been known to tell a tall tale or two on the stump. A Biden spokesperson didn't not immediately respond to questions about the incident.
But on a more serious note, he later referred to tonight’s debate, and reminded voters that in the previous three, neither John McCain or Sarah Palin “had the words ‘middle class’ part their lips.”
“The silence was deafening in the first two McCain appearances,” Biden said. “He never, never, never mentioned the people who are the ones most under siege by all the things I mentioned at the beginning here. He never mentioned who they are.”
He said it’s not that McCain doesn’t “get it,” but that he doesn’t understand what’s really going on for middle class families.
“John’s last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S,” Biden said, miscounting.
*** UPDATE *** A Biden spokesman clarifies that the senator's detainment was by a campus policeman. And for what it's worth, a spokesperson for Ohio University says that the OU Police Department has no record of any arrest, although she says that it's possible that an incident report -- long since archived -- could have been filed at the time.
