The uneasiness with which many Democrats have received Sen. Joe Biden’s nomination as vice president doesn’t involve Biden’s tendency to shoot himself in the foot as much as it does their confusion over exactly where those well-heeled feet stand.

There’s been a teacup-tempest in the past news cycle over Biden’s bashing of a Democratic Party ad that called Republican hopeful John McCain “out of touch” to the point of being computer illiterate and generally unfunky. Biden told CBS anchor Katie Couric last night that he considered the ad “terrible.”

"I didn't know we did it, and if I'd had anything to do with it, we would have never done it," Biden said.

When the McCain campaign – of course – used Biden’s gaping insipidity to aim a broadside at Barack Obama in general and his campaign ads in particular, Biden tried to backtrack. But, like Hippocrates’ oath for physicians, explanations for political stumbles should first do no harm:

“I was asked about an ad I’d never seen, reacting merely to press reports,” Biden was quoted as saying. And remember… this is a squabble over a candidate’s detachment from all things current.

There had been nervous mutters about Biden’s long tenure as a “loose cannon”, always ready to shoot off his mouth and then cool down the breeches with the cool unguent of embarrassed foot-pedaling. In his own Presidential bid during the party’s primary-go-round last year, Biden memorably jackassed himself in a reference to his future running mate, as noted by Chris Cilizza:

“On the day he formally announced his candidacy, a New York Observer story that quoted Biden as calling Obama ‘articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy’ came out, and the resultant uproar effectively undercut any momentum Biden was hoping to build.”

Well… at least Biden didn’t pat him on the head and deny Obama is "uppity".

And there’s another worrisome facet to Biden... his arrogance.

Other than a vague awareness of the Delaware Senator as a chronic also-ran Presidential candidate (whose numerous runs were turning him into a kind of Democratic version of the “always-a-bridesmaid” Harold Stassen), I had no opinion of him one way or another until Senate testimony in 1998 on Saddam’s see-saw game with IAEA nuclear inspectors. In a hearing over whether Iraq’s off- limits site designations could hide a viable weapons program, longtime inspector Scott Ritter affirmed it could to the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees.

That’s when Biden ripped into Ritter, trying nothing less than to shame the inspector into silence:

“Biden suggested that the question of taking the nation to war was a responsibility ‘slightly beyond your pay grade. That's why they (who make such decisions) get paid big bucks.  That's why they get their limos  and you don't.’  Biden advised that Albright had more to consider than ‘whether old Scotty-boy didn't get in’ to a suspected weapons site. He said that the question of the use of force was the kind of decision that people like Colin Powell and George Bush made, saying that it was a very complicated decision, repeating, ‘It's above your pay grade.’"

That's why they get their limos and you don't. Wow…

Ritter basically was doing his job – being relentless in the search for any hint of a Saddam bomb. When he became convinced that Iraq’s nuclear weapons programs ended with the first Gulf War in the early ’90, Ritter was one of the first sources with any authority to oppose the war in Iraq - long before the 2003 invasion - and has remained a powerful critic of our New Imperium in the Mideast ever since.

Look over Biden’s words again, and remember that he’s aiming them at a countryman, at a conscientious American operative trying to keep us safe. And now… remember, he could be a heartbeat away from the top spot in America.

Biden came to his “working-class” base the hard way: He fell there. His family, once prosperous, lost its wealth. As a Senator, his expensive suits and first-class demands take on an almost defiant edge, as if he considers himself a prodigal grandee eager to assert his return to the plush life, strutting in what he considers the finery of deserved status.

Politically, his actions on the Hill haven't exactly indicated he’s a “man of the people” – unless those people occupy the offices and boardrooms of corporate, financial America. His legislation helped lay the groundwork for Delaware to become a center of our now-debased credit industry, by removing limits on interest rate unsecured lenders could charge.

Also, along with Joe Lieberman and some other “practical” Democrats, he helped limit bankruptcy relief for debtors suckered by adjustable rates that could quickly wipe out their ability to pay. For all the blame rightfully shouldered by the GOP for setting up the credit industry as Loanshark, Inc.,  Democrats like Biden played their part, sometimes by contributing mere inaction.

As “In Debt We Trust” filmmaker Danny Schechter once noted:

“They call Joe Biden ‘the senator from MBNA,’ because he's from the state of Delaware, which is one of the two states that has given very low tax rates to all these credit card companies, and unlimited opportunities for them to operate out of the state on a national basis.”

On top of that, Biden is one of the most combative of Beltway chickenhawks when it comes to baiting Russia, throwing his lot solidly with any and all “interests” pushing to re-energize the Cold War. He has made mealy-mouthed on-again, off-again critiques of the Iraq War, but mostly on tactics – never admitting the obvious conclusion that the war was just about the stupidest move this country ever made. Can’t, really – he voted for its authorization. And he remains a fan of splitting up the volatile country.

Biden can be reduced to the simplest exponent on other roiling Mideastern issues: As he told Israel’s Shalom TV last year, “I am a Zionist. You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.” Same old business, same old stand - and, no, he won't be inviting Palestinian contingents to Wilmington Labor Day cook-outs any time soon.

The Obama campaign is found of saying Biden has populist appeal, but his brand of “populism” seems more than content to let the bulk of this country’s population unrepresented by well-connected lobbyists eat cake.