A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., on Sunday guaranteed that if elected, Sen. Barack Obama., D-Ill., will be tested by an international crisis within his first six months in power and he will need supporters to stand by him as he makes tough, and possibly unpopular, decisions.

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

What this even means is anyone's guess. But it seems to me that if Biden genuinely does believe that Obama is going to be tested early on in his Administration, because of Obama's inexperience, he might fail that test. And that would certainly take the bloom off the rose, to say the least. So Biden is trying in advance to get people to cover for Obama since "it's not gonna be apparent" that any Obama Administration will offer the correct response to the hypothetical and undefined "crisis" that will surely come Barack Obama's way.

The way that Biden just naturally presumes that the election is as good as over and that we ought to just proceed with the handling of a future "crisis" by a President Obama is almost as cute as his presumption that a President Obama will assuredly get the undefined, hypothetical "crisis" Biden alludes to "right" and that the genius of a President Obama's handiwork will be so complex, so beyond mortal understanding, that "it's not gonna be apparent" that an Obama Administration did the right thing. But of course, Joe Biden being Joe Biden, he's not content to restrict his arrogance to these statements alone.

No. He has to go further:

"I've forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know, so I'm not being falsely humble with you. I think I can be value added, but this guy has it," the Senate Foreign Relations chairman said of Obama.

Biden, it should be noted, has a much higher IQ than you do:

And all those smarts help Biden notice something . . . eventually:

After speaking for just over a quarter of an hour, Biden noticed the media presence in the back of the small ballroom.

"I probably shouldn't have said all this because it dawned on me that the press is here," he joked.

Ya think?