Historical:
Go back to 1961.  Post-Bay of Pigs, Kruschev met Kennedy in Vienna, and decided that Kennedy was weak and childish (when, it appears, he really was sedated b/c of back pain).  So, Nikita goes back to Moscow and starts stirring the pot and, come the summer of 61, the Russians instigated the Berlin crisis, putting in a partial blockade and which culminated on 8/13 with building the Wall.  Then Kennedy and the West stand up to the Russians, calling up a lot of the US reserves and shipping US units to Germany.  In Germany, the US units convoyed across East Germany - as was their right under the Four Power agreements that governed both Berlin and, to a lesser degree, inter-German relations - to break down the blockade.  The Wall remained, IIRC because it was seen as a domestic intra-German thing - note that it was East German border guards who built, maintained and manned it from day one - not NATO v. the Russians.  

So, Nikita tested Kennedy and found he had some steel.

Then, come 1962, Kruschev - as much b/c of his own internal politics as anything else - went ahead and tested Kennedy again in Cuba with the missiles.  Note that the US was not lily-white pure-as-the-driven-snow in this area, having stationed its own IRBMs in Turkey and elsewhere where they could easily reach the Sovs.  From their point of view, putting missiles in Cuba was a matter of sauce for the goose.  On both sides, the respective military hierarchies were the driving engines behind pushing expansion of their respective arsenals and deployments.  Note also that in the post-Berlin Crisis of 1961 (like within a month) a three year moratorium on nuclear testing ended (8/30) and the Sovs restarted their testing on 9/1.  The US also restarted its atmospheric testing, conducting a series of tests of all sorts of live weapons dropped from B-52s, shot on various flavors of missiles and, in one instance, a live Polaris missle launched from a sub  (legend has it that the Polaris launch was to see whether they'd actually work - no one was sure, and there'd been signs they wouldn't).  In the spring and summer of 62, these were being popped off several per week - at least once, twice the same day.  This muscle-flexing got really quiet around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and then resumed afterward.

After all this, the internal Kremlin politics led to Kruschev being ousted by Brezhnev in 1964.  This had at least part of its source in his having to withdraw the Sov missles from Cuba.

Practical:
One needs to remember that Bay of Pigs was one of the numerous cockamamie schemes - the most conventional some might argue, seeing as how it involved organized paramilitary units - that Bush the Elder's Yale buddies running CIA had come up with to "deal with Castro".  

Not that, as it turned out, the level of "dealing with" Castro was necessary.  Frankly, dealing with Castro then is the analog of "dealing with terrorists" today - he's more useful to the Republicans being around than being gone.  I think history will tell us both are needless obsessions.

Bay of Pigs also - to my eye - bears the same pattern which Bush the Elder and, to a degree the younger, display:  Upon leaving office, make sure you take a nice runny dump on the rug for your successor to have to clean up.  

Bush the Elder went into Somalia only after losing the election and knowing full well it couldn't be resolved before he had to leave office.  And, FWIW, Somalia was a minor pimple on history's behind.  But it managed to tie up Clinton and, in conjunction with the gays in the military mess, wind up cutting the best of his national security team (e.g., Les Aspin) out of the loop.  Throw in - in the Spring of 93 alone - Zoe Baird having nanny trouble keeping her from getting confirmed, a bimbo eruption, and Waco and this kept Clinton from setting the agenda for his first term.  By that time, Gingrich had put together his ideas for the Contract on America and was raising all sorts of hell in the House such that 1994 (and all that followed) were well on their way.

Kennedy was similarly hobbled by what the Republicans left behind for him in the Bay of Pigs and elsewhere, though one can debate till the cows come home just how different Kennedy's Cold War would have been (though there are and were signs the detente ofthe 70s could have been achieved in the 60s).

So, I for one fully expect Bush, Cheney and their buddies in the national security establishment - both in and out of office - to come up with some crisis.  I also expect it to come between now and the election as a sort of last-ditch attempt to swing national-security voters to McSame.

We saw one try in the weeks immediately post-Obama's Summer World Tour, in which the Georgia crisis came.  There is little doubt in my mind now and wasn't then (go read my diary) that Georgia was an attempt to start a new Cold War.  At that time, it seemed an attempt to sway voters to McCain and, collaterally, keep the defense dollars flowing into contractors' pockets.  

If that doesn't work electorally, then I would expect that McCain's latest importunings to the Russians - we've seen reports in the last couple days about his staff seeking (through some apparent stupidity) campaign contributions, but remember, a lot of his staff (e.g., Scheunemann) lobbied for the Russians, too - and some Cheney-esque monkey business to lead to a new crisis, somewhere, intended to consume Obama's initiative and seize the agenda from him.

Because the Democrats are coming with an agenda, and it's one the Republicans decidedly do not like.  

No accident, no gaffe.
So, IMHO, Biden did not make a gaffe today.  Rather, he was doing something lawyers call "pulling the sting" - get the bad stuff out in the open so you control how it comes out and your opponent cannot control the initiative.  And, this was as much a warning shot as was Obama's campaign's letter to Mukasey demanding the 2006 election/US Attorneys scandal special prosecutor look at the ACORN leaks.  He was telling the American people to expect worse from the Republicans, between now and the elections and after them.

"They're going to want to test him, just like they did young John Kennedy," he said Saturday night in San Francisco." They're going to want to test him. And they're going to find out this guy's got steel in his spine."