As regular Stumper readers probably know by now, I'm totally addicted to "Bidenisms." By that I don't mean the stupid stuff that seems to slip from the Delaware senator's mouth as at semiregular intervals--like when he said that Barack Obama was "clean and articulate" last February. I'm talking about a different (and more frequent) verbal tic: the need to preface everything he says with a word or phrase meant to emphasize his own honesty. To date, I've collected about a dozen of these "I'm Being Candid" catchphrases. They include "literally" (often repeated several times in a row); "this is factual"; "I'm not making this up"; "I mean this sincerely"; "I'm serious"; "I'm not joking"; "this is not hyperbole"; "this is the God's honest truth" and "I mean it." The only thing that matters more to Biden than speaking his mind, it seems, is letting you know that he's speaking his mind.

Apparently, the tic is contagious. As the Politico's Jonathan Martin points out, Biden's boss sounded suspiciously Bidenesque while dinging John McCain this afternoon in Elko, Nev. "Yesterday, John McCain actually said that if he's president he'll take on--and I quote--'the old boys network in Washington,'" Obama said. "I'm not making this up. This is somebody who's been in Congress for 26 years, who put seven of the most powerful Washington lobbyists in charge of his campaign. And now he tells us that he’s the one who will take on the ol’ boy network.  The ol’ boy network?  In the McCain campaign, that’s called a staff meeting."

Hoo-hah! Hearing the echo, I have to wonder: Has Biden been consulting on the feistier parts of Obama's recent speeches? For weeks now, the Democratic No. 2 has regularly zipped off anti-McCain zingers far zestier than anything his No. 1 has been able to muster. Today, for example, he found a particularly memorable way to call McCain a latecomer to financial regulation: “If John cares so much about this now, where was he a week ago? Where was he a month ago? Where was he five years ago? All of a sudden it’s ‘My goodness, there’s greed on Wall Street!’” But now that Obama has taken a more aggressive tack, lots of Bidenesque mockery seems to be showing up in his speeches. "By the end of the week John McCain will be telling us how he and Phil Gramm and the seven lobbyists are planning to storm the Treasury Department with torches and pitchforks," he added today in Elko. "Come on."

Perhaps the problem is that even though Biden has been saying stuff like this for weeks, no one seems to be paying attention--so Chicago just decided to call it up from the minors. Which should come as something of a relief for ol' Joe, given the recent report in the Washington Post that "the buzz around Palin has left Biden largely obscured and generating so little attention that some Democrats are questioning whether he was the right pick."  At least if this veep thing doesn't work out he can still get a job as a speechwriter. 

We mean it. Literally.