The President issued a short statement. (Shouldn’t the word “thoughtful” be banned from now on?)

Gates issued a long, impenetrable block of Harvard-speak.

Which makes Crowley the winner because he went in front of the cameras to be cross-examined. Here’s the video.

How’s Hillary doing? Stunningly, according to this puff piece from USA Today (via ABC News) which has some interesting nuggets all the same.

‘It turned into Hillary v Biden and she crushed him,’ is how the issue of more troops for Afghanistan is described.

And we’re told she’s not interested in running again because this job ’scratches a different itch’. Hmm.

We always said Joe Biden was made of the right stuff even if his campaign status as the anti-Palin, a safe and experienced pair of hands, looks increasingly ridiculous.

And here’s what the Teleprompter blogger – still going, still funny and still largely ignored by the MSM – makes of it.

Maureen Dowd says the president needs to be careful about allowing the idea to take root that his vice-president is a lovable buffoon.

Comes under the heading ‘Well he would, wouldn’t he?’ but worth a read all the same.

He does preposterously overstate Biden’s role, it must be said.

Vice President Biden has moved vigorously to stake out foreign policy as his turf. His visit to Afghanistan, right before the Inauguration, could not but send a signal to Hillary that he would conduct foreign policy in the new administration, leaving Hillary in the role of backup.

At the rate Biden’s going with his clowning around, he’ll be no threat to her whatsoever.

Remind me never to give Vice-President Biden a job as a salesman.

His message to America’s allies in Munich yesterday was that the US needed their help in the world arena. Or as he so charmingly put it:

America will do more, that’s the good news. But the bad news is American will ask for more from our partners.

Bad news?!? 

Now here’s where it gets interesting. The Wall Street Journal has what it says is “the text of the speech as prepared for delivery”. The relevant portion reads as follows:

America will do more, but America will ask for more from our partners. Here is what we will do and what we hope our partners will consider.

So was the good news-bad news line just another one of Joe’s clumsy ad libs?

It would certainly answer the question we posed earlier in the week.

The famously accident-prone vice-president is off to Europe for a few days. In between gaffes, he’ll be asking America’s allies for more support in Afghanistan (ha! good luck with that, Joe).

He’s actually speaking at a high-powered global security conference in Munich, where he’s expected to lay out America’s new foreign policy.

The only question is how exactly his foot will end up in his mouth. An ill-advised WWII joke? Accidentally declaring war on somebody? Watch this space.

Colbert King in the Washington Post ends inauguration week like a bear with a sore head.

Quite what Bill Clinton’s done to deserve his telling off is beyond me but King’s only getting warmed up. Who on earth would waste their breath giving this advice to Joe Biden?

No more smart-alecky stuff like the gratuitous public poke at Chief Justice John Roberts because of the flubbed presidential oath. Be the elder statesman of few words.

Here’s the video of the Roberts incident. Obama is NOT amused . . . 

Vice-president Joe Biden is back doing what he does best – publicly criticising Barack Obama.

In this case it’s for not notifying Senate intelligence committee chairman Dianne Feinstein about the Panetta CIA appointment.

Feinstein, meanwhile, appears to have gone completely off the reservation and is kicking against the party line on Burris, saying he should be seated.

Bringing this slightly odd response from the increasingly arrogant Harry Reid: “That’s not valid, her statement. I told her that, OK?”

We like Joe Biden but his interview on This Week yesterday set new standards in self-delusion.

When Barack Obama talked to me about being his vice president I said  . . . I want a commitment from you that in every important decision you’ll make, every critical decision, economic and political as well as foreign policy, I’ll get to be in the room.”

Obama, I’m sure, could not care less what he thinks.

Click here for the clip.