Sen. Biden gains more respect

I just came across this article from Blue Hampshire by Mike Caulfield on the CNN/Youtube debate. His conclusion: Biden won. However, that is not the reason why I am posting on this here. Caulfield has an interesting snippet which shows why Biden rises above the other candidates.

Caulfield notes the following:

Finally, the thing he didn't say really moved me, and still moves me. When asked whether they had a family member in the armed forces, none of the other candidates had an answer.

Biden had an answer, but chose not to use it. Biden has a son Beau. He almost lost him in the car accident that took his wife and daughter. He was sworn into office in 1972 while keeping vigil at Beau's hospital bedside.

He now risks losing him again. Beau is scheduled to be deployed to Iraq with his National Guard unit in early 2008. Biden has every reason in the world to get us out as early as possible. The Richardson plan would have the war over before his son ever went.

Yet Biden thinks it will take a year to do it safely. And when given an opportunity to knock it out of the park through calling attention his son Beau's situation, he chose a path of dignity. I respect that.

The actual question was:

QUESTION: Dear Presidential Candidates, see those three flags over my shoulder? They covered the coffins of my grandfather, my father, and my oldest son.

Someday, mine will join them.

I do not want to see my youngest sons join them.

I have two questions. By what date after January 21st, 2009, will all U.S. troops be out of Iraq? And how many family members do you have serving in uniform?

Sen. Dodd was the first to answer the question and he noted that he had served in the National Guard and Reserves, and that he had cousins and an uncle who had also served in the past. The question from there moved away from family members currently serving in Iraq to a focus on when troops would come home. Part of the reason was that none of the Democratic candidates (that I'm aware of) has any family members currently serving in Iraq. As the article notes, however, Sen. Biden could have answered that his son was not only in the National Guard (despite having been elected as Delaware's Attorney General) but that his unit is scheduled to go to Iraq in early 2008. Much like Caulfield, that Sen. Biden didn't say this during the debate, even though such an answer would have been entirely appropriate given the question asked, makes me respect him even more.

I do note that I found out about this article from Blue Hampshire through the Joe Biden blog. Does the fact that they highlighted it diminish the point above? Not really. I mean, he had a national audience during the debate and he chose not to use his son's service as a political gimmick, linking to someone else who reported on this doesn't diminish it at all, since the main reason for the link was because Caulfield argued that Sen. Biden won the debate, and not the snippet on his son.