Biden tries to calm storm

M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News

Published February 3, 2007 at midnight

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WASHINGTON — Sen. Joe Biden took a second crack at making a first impression Saturday, opening his coming-out party at a gathering of Democrats with an apology for controversial remarks that muddied his presidential campaign announcement on Wednesday.

"Well, how was your week?" Biden said after taking the podium at the Democratic National Committee's winter meetings at the Hilton Washington hotel.

Over the rumble of laughter and applause, he quickly added: "It's been a hell of a week."

Biden, D-Del., kicked off his presidential campaign with controversy earlier in the week. It happened in a New York Observer interview, when he had harsh words for Democratic rivals Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., and made bigger headlines for comments about Sen. Barack Obama that were widely interpreted as being insensitive or condescending to African-Americans.

About Obama, Biden told the newspaper: ''You got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.''

It was intended as a compliment, but critics seized on the word "clean."

Meanwhile, Obama was among those who said the comments were "historically inaccurate" because they dismissed trailblazing African-American candidates in the past.

Biden apologized all week, but the controversy had not gone away by the time he got his turn to speak at the DNC gathering, which represents an unofficial start to the fight for the party's nomination and the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.

"I want to say that I truly regret that the words I spoke offended people I admire very much," Biden said. "And I'm humbled that so many of these same people, as well as many of you in this room, judge them by my history and my heart. And for that, I'll be very grateful for all of you."

Biden's apology overshadowed the rest of his speech on Saturday, when he touted his more than three decades of public service as a way to get out of the "very deep hole" he thinks President Bush has dug for the country.

Like the other nine contenders who spoke at the two-day Democratic gathering, Biden has harsh words for Bush over the war in Iraq. But he has tried to distinguish himself by promoting a plan to stem sectarian violence by dividing the country into three, semi-autonomous regions with a central government in charge of borders, currency and the national military.

"The president's surge is not a solution. It's a tragic mistake," Biden said. "And I will do everything in my power to stop it."

The war is proving to be an overpowering issue in the fight for the Democratic nomination, which will end in August 2008 when one of the ten contenders who spoke Friday and Saturday is feted at the Pepsi Center in Denver.

It figured prominently on Friday, when Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and retired Gen. Wesley Clark of Arkansas, started the presidential cattle call.

On Saturday, Biden, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and former Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska got their turns.

Richardson, a veteran of Congress and the Bill Clinton Administration, told several hundred committee members and Democratic partisans that the United States needs someone with his international experience to repair the country's damaged issue around the world.

"The war in Iraq is not the disease," he said. "Iraq is a symptom. The disease is arrogance."

He dismissed President Bush, the former Texas governor, as someone "who thinks 'axis of evil' is a bargaining position."

"I know the usual rap on governors is that we don't know anything about foreign affairs," Richardson said, pointing toward "a certain governor from Texas."

"But not this governor," he added.

Richardson also challenged his Democratic rivals to pledge to avoid personal attacks and save their fire for Republicans.

Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, told the story of meeting a 5-year-old child in Washington state.

He said the child asked: "Would 100 more troops in Iraq make a difference?" and "Would 1,000 more troops make a difference?"

Vilsack said the child soon added: "I'm frightened every day."

"I'm tired of being in a country where 5-year-old children are frightened," Vilsack said.

Vilsack, whose home state hosts the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses in early 2008, told the story of being raised by nuns in a Catholic orphanage before he was adopted and given his unique last name.

He said he has felt like an outsider all his life, and an outsider — someone outside the Washington establishment — is what the country needs.

"As an outsider we can change things," he told the fellow Democrats. "We are a party of outsiders... And let me remind you, we win with outsiders."

On Saturday, Democrats heard from an even bigger outsider, former Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska. He served in the U.S. Senate from 1969 to 1981, first making his name as one of the more fierce opponents of the Vietnam War and the campaign to end the military draft.

He entered the hotel ballroom to a rousing version of John Lennon's "Power to the People" on Saturday. Still, all but a handful of die-hard supporters sat on their hands as he called for creating a national initiative to let average people decide weighty issues and then he launched into blistering criticism of fellow Democrats who "gave political cover" to Bush by approving a war powers resolution in October 2002, just before the mid-term election.

He said anyone who voted for the war — or even for continued funding — "is not qualified to hold the office of president," he said to cheers from a handful of devoted volunteers.

At age 76, he is the oldest candidate in the Democratic field.

"If anybody raises the issue of my age in this campaign," he joked, "I hope you'll step forward and say Washington needs adult supervision."

M.E. Sprengelmeyer can be reached at 202-408-2729 or SprengelmeyerM@SHNS.com

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