Joe Biden may be political savvy, but he’s certainly not politically principled. At least that’s the charge made by Stephen Silbiger, the one-time chief legislative aide of the late Democrat Congressman Stephen Solarz, a former lobbyist for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees and currently an attorney in Washington, DC.

In an article published in Power Line, Silbiger recounts his personal interactions with then-Senator Biden, including a particular incident in which Biden revealed his truth colors.

After having finally persuaded Biden to withdraw his support for the Balanced Budget Constitutional Amendment, which would eventually fail to pass, Biden asked to meet with Silbiger, whereupon he laid into him: “You are going to lose this issue. You are going to lose this issue because the Balanced Budget Constitutional Amendment sounds good and the American people are stupid and will support anything that sounds good.”

Silbiger notes that what struck him most was Biden’s view of Americans being “stupid” and therefore easily manipulated into supporting “anything that sounds good.” In other words, Biden displayed the classic arrogance of a Washington elitist. He also points to a comment Biden made during his failed 1988 run for the Democrat presidential nomination: “He had a Southern strategy in which he bragged about receiving an award from George Wallace and claimed that ‘[w]e Delawareans were on the side of the South in the Civil War.” Well okay then.

However, the most telling insights from Silbiger come from his explanation as to why Barack Obama chose Biden as his running mate:

Barack Obama selected him to be his running mate is one of the oddest pairings in American history. I believe the only reason why someone as ideological as Barack Obama would select Joe Biden is that he had the same opinion of him that I had.

Barack Obama knew, as I did, that even the most high-powered MRI could not detect an honest or principled bone in Biden’s body. Barack Obama knew that with Joe Biden, there would be no honest disagreements or principled dissents from his policies. All you had to do was feed his arrogant sense of entitlement and you could get him to support any position. In fact, the man who bragged about getting an award from George Wallace, and that many in his state sided with those who enslaved Black people, could tell an African-American audience that Mitt Romney would put them in chains.

When you are not very bright and have no scruples and you think the American people are stupid, you can say anything.

One last observation. While both Biden and President Donald Trump can be rightly criticized for repeatedly making ridiculous statements, there is one major distinction between the two. Biden speaks as a political insider with the attitude of an arrogant elitist, while Trump speaks as a Washington outsider with the attitude of a proud American. Trump doesn’t think you’re dumb. He thinks Beltway elitists are.