Joe Biden demonstrates social media prowess by quoting Yeats

While campaigning in Iowa yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden swung by a phone bank to greet a few Obama supporters. Biden made a couple calls himself, according to the pool report.

On one call he spoke with a man named Hal Goldstein, who asked why the White House has become less responsive to voters over the last four years. Biden explained how the Obama administration is utilizing social media to be more accessible. And then, demonstrating his knowledge of cutting-edge technology, Biden cited an 18th Century poet.

“[W]hat you ought to do is, this is, there’s awful lot in transition. There’s a great line from the Irish poet Yeats writing about his Ireland back in 1916, its called Easter Sunday 1916. And there’s a line in that poem that better describes, in my view, where we are today in the world than the state of his Ireland in 1916. It was after the first rising, the first attempt to rise up against the British in the 20th century and he said: ‘All’s changed, changed utterly. Terrible beauty has been born.’

“And with regard to the social media and media generally, we’re in the midst of a maelstrom here, the change is happening so rapidly and so fast. As a matter of fact, there’s a guy standing in front of me, I think he’s a reporter, he’s tweeting right now as I’m talking.”

“Seriously, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing,” [Biden] continued. “He’s tweeting while I’m talking. ...

Biden spoke with Goldstein for roughly 10 minutes before hanging up.

[Pool report by Politico's Reid Epstein]