Biden Off More Than He Can Chew

"America needs to show the Arab world that we're not bent on its destruction. Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran." -Senator Joe Biden


By this time,the whole world knows that the Chosen One has picked Joe Biden as his running mate.

It definitely made me smile.

Among other things, we're in for some sidesplitting ads. Biden has any number of soundbites on tape talking about how unqualified Barack Obama is for the Oval Office and how great a president John McCain would make, and the fun should really start once Biden's well known tendency towards gaffes gets started under the pressure of the campaign trail.

The dinosaur media is loyally trying to step into the breach and put a positive spin on this,but even some of them are having problems shilling for the Emperor's New Clothes.

The media line is that Biden is a 'scrapper', who adds foreign policy 'expertise' to the ticket, moderates concerns about Obama's inexperience and will help Obama with working class whites and Catholics.They couldn't be more wrong.

Biden,the consummate Washington insider has been inured in the Senate for even longer than John McCain. He's been running for president off and on since 1987, but both of his two actual campaigns, in 1988 and 2008 ended in abject failure, which says something about his scrappy campaigning skills and appeals to Catholics and the working class. In`08, he ended up with about 3% of the vote.

And of course, there's another problem with the idea that Catholics are going to line up behind a ticket where the presidential candidate supported what amounts to infanticide.The media may be doing its best ignore this,but I guarantee you it's going to come out, especially as it percolates up from the blogosphere and the McCain camp starts publicizing this as the campaign rolls on.

As for that foreign policy experience, Biden certainly has it. He's a long-time member and current chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. The question, of course, is whether experience translates into expertise, as the above quote shows us. (Here's a hint, Senator..Iran is not an Arab country...)

Another problem the Obama campaign is going to have to deal with is Biden's tendencies towards putting people to sleep with long, drawn out speeches and a predilection towards shooting himself in the foot with his own mouth.

The choice of Biden reveals a number of things about Obama and the current state of his campaign.

-The Chosen one was probably literally agonizing over having to make an actual choice that could have an effect beyond mere rhethoric, which is why he released the news late Friday night at the start of the the weekend, rather than on a Monday, when it would have the full length of the news cycle.

- Both the candidate and the campaign are running scared. They realize they have no counter to charges of inexperience and naivete leveled by the McCain campaign, so he went for a beltway insider, rather than risking a candidate who appeared to be outside the system and more in tune with Hope And Change like Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia or Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas.Unfortunately, the choice of someone like Biden highlights Obama's lack of resume rather than enhances it, the way I see it.

-Obama has made a decision to go more negative in his campaign.Biden was hired on to be the Obama campaign's attack dog, something that could become problematical if Biden goes off the leash and says something he shouldn't. A lot of Obama's image is tied up in the idea that he somehow represents the new politics that goes beyond partisan attacks, but he has apparently decided to put that behind him for expediency's sake. In other words, Obama is willing and happy to risk what got him this far if it gets him into the Oval office.

-Obama apparently decided that his grudge against the Clintons is more important than any nonsense about party unity. It's widely known that Hillary didn't even make Obama's short list of VP propects. It will be interesting to see how this little soap opera plays out in Denver next week.