FUMBLE: BIDEN ACCUSED OF “FEAR MONGERING”

South of the border, things didn’t go so well for U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden on the flu file this week. In a live interview on NBC’s Today Show, he was asked what advice he might have, if a member of his family said they planned on traveling to Mexico and back in the next week. Regular readers of TD&F will know our standing policy on entertaining hypotheticals, which can be summed up as follows: “DON’T!” So, how did the veep handle it? “I would tell members of my family, and I have, I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now. It’s not that it’s going to Mexico, it’s you’re in a confined aircraft, when one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft. That’s me. I would not be at this point, if they had another way of transportation, suggesting they ride the subway,” he added. “From my perspective, it relates to is mitigation. If you’re out in the middle of a field and someone sneezes that’s one thing. If you’re in a closed aircraft, a closed container, closed car, a closed classroom, it’s a different thing.” Ouch. Biden was promptly assailed by many, including key players in the U.S. travel industry, for whipping up fears about traveling anywhere by any means. “To suggest that people not fly at this stage of things is a broad brush stroke bordering on fear mongering,” American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith said. “The facts of the situation at this stage anyway certainly don’t support that.” Prompt “clarifications” were issued by his office and gamely attempted by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who tried to suggest that “what he meant to say” was that anyone who was feeling sick should take the proper precautions. That wasn’t good enough for ABC’s Jake Tapper, who shot back “With all due respect, and I sympathize with you trying to explain the vice president’s comments, that’s not even remotely close to what he said.” Gibbs tried again, responding “I understand what he said, and I’m telling you what he meant to say,” which prompted guffaws from the press corps. What does this show? First, the danger in entertaining a hypothetical scenario – which prompted Biden to launch into a diatribe of his own construct: not about the potential dangers of traveling to Mexico, but about what he considers the dangers of being out in public anywhere other than a large, open field. Second, it shows the need for multiple spokespeople to be on the same page. President Obama has been urging calm, telling people not to over-react, and to be sure to wash their hands. Biden essentially said the sky is falling, and suddenly the entire administration had to scramble and try to back-pedal on his behalf. And finally, it shows (as Bill Walker noted in a different TD&F item last week) the problem with trying to express a “personal” viewpoint when you speak as one of the official voices of a separate entity. When Biden speaks, he speaks for the Obama administration, regardless of what his personal views on the flu situation might be. Fumble!