Former Laura Bush press secretary Andrew Malcolm has spent the past several weeks using his position as reporter/blogger for the Los Angeles Times to portray Vice President Joe Biden as a do-nothing buffoon. Malcolm has taken to writing mocking posts about Biden's purportedly thin and/or trivial public schedule, complete with repeated use of a photo of Biden looking silly:

Examples of Malcolm's mockery of Biden's supposedly light schedule can be found here, here, here, here and here.

I say “supposedly light” because it's fairly silly to think that Biden doesn't do anything that isn't on his public schedule. But that's what Malcolm pretends: Biden isn't doing much, because there isn't much on his official schedule.

Well, in the past day, we've learned that Biden played a key role in Sen. Arlen Specter's switch from the Republican to Democratic Party. And the LA Times “Top of the Ticket” blog for which Malcolm writes features a post today about Biden's hands-on role in Specter's switch, and describes him as “Senate Arm Twister in Chief” in legislative negotiations. But Andrew Malcolm, who so enjoys mocking Biden's light schedule, didn't write this account of his effectiveness; his co-blogger Johanna Neuman did. Malcolm is probably busy scouring the 'net, looking for funny pictures of Biden to use in his next post about how Biden doesn't do anything.