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The Biden factor
August 24, 2008
The selection of Joe Biden, for all his merits, was something of an anticlimax, and the Obama campaign is mostly to blame. It overmanaged the announcement. The ponderous stagecraft of the delay in releasing the decision and all the teasing of the press (a good thing in its own right, by the way: we deserve to be teased) were intended to supply a burst of excitement as the convention began. Also, the promise to let campaign supporters who registered their cellphone numbers get the news first by text message has doubtless done wonders for the Obama database. (Not that most of them did get the news first that way, of course; unless they turned off TV and radio and stayed up into the early hours on Saturday, glued to their phones.) In any event, Biden had been so widely tipped that the fanfare fell flat. Oh, right, fine, Joe Biden.
He is a good choice but an unadventurous one–despite the fact that his verbosity and rapid-response opining can get him into trouble. (The Republicans have put a “Biden gaffe clock” on their website.) His knowledge and experience of foreign affairs fill a perceived gap in the Obama campaign, and his pugilistic style is something else the campaign can use. But it doesn’t fix what has been going wrong, which is the apparent failure of Barack Obama to connect with uncommitted voters. Biden does connect: he has that common touch. But if Obama cannot do that for himself, having a partner who can will not be good enough.
Biden is too good a choice. Viewing the odd couple one wonders: would not Biden-Obama be a much more persuasive ticket?
Posted by: RCS | August 24th, 2008 at 4:59 pm | Report this commentI thought a year ago that Biden-Obama was the best ticket, but Obama-Biden will work. I had not other candidate in mind for the VP slot.
Posted by: James Canning | August 24th, 2008 at 5:59 pm | Report this commentBiden is just another slavish loyalist to the American military-intelligence colossus, never questioning the destructive impact of that establishment on the development of American democracy and the ethical stand of its foreign policy.
He’s also rather a weasel-like politician, one fitted with an almost cancerous ego, transplanted hairline, and plastic teeth.
Weasels can be aggressive, snapping and growling, just as Joe Biden can be.
In fact, the list of stupid things Joe has said over his career is a long one.
But then he’s back with that big plastic smile and new words intending to make people feel he never said what he said before.
He’s a ghastly choice, second only in his rating as a phony to John Edwards, leaving out of the ratings Lieberman who is in a class utterly of his own.
The choice only shows how almost impossible it is to turn the imperial course of the United States even a few degrees.
Posted by: JOHN CHUCKMAN, TORONTO | August 25th, 2008 at 2:40 pm | Report this commentGeorge Washington had wooden teeth. IMO Biden was the best choice for VP, I was hoping it would be him all along.
Posted by: Sade | August 25th, 2008 at 3:12 pm | Report this commentHe really balances the ticket. A much better choice than Bayh or Kaine. I Predict that now McCain will choose Mitt Romney… This could get ugly.
Joe Biden tried to delay the invasion of Iraq. A delay in the launching of that exceedingly ill-advised adventure might have prevented it from taking place at all.
Posted by: James Canning | August 25th, 2008 at 6:05 pm | Report this commentI don’t know anything about George Washington’s teeth. Otherwise I agree 100% with sade’s comment above, especially the part about Romney, who is one of the ugliest American politicians I have ever seen in my lifetime, and I have been following presidential campaigns since the time of Franklin Roosevelt (though admittedly not too closely in Roosevelt’s case, as I was still a young child when he died).
However, this year the Republicans managed to come up with not just one, but three, of the ugliest, most vicious and demagogic presidential candidates ever to disgrace US politics, namely Huckabee and Giuliani in addition to Romney. Fortunately only Romney has a chance of being picked for VP, but he will more than make up for the missing other two.
In the meantime, what on earth are the Democrats doing at their convention anyway? As David Gergen pointed out on CNN, it started off as an utterly vapid, pointless affair, devoted, not to attacking McBush, but trying to defend against the Fox News/Jerome Corsi slime attacks that Obama and his wife are not patriotic Americans.
But voters who believe these sewer attacks are not going to change their minds anyway, no matter how much the Obamas try to defend themselves, unless they can find a way to change their skin color before November. That, I am afraid, is the only change that many Republicans (and quite a few Democrats too) would ever believe in.
McBush and the Republicans, on the other hand, like the true Republicans they are, are going to be attacking Obama/Biden at their convention from the moment that the opening gun goes off, and not just them, but Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Edwards, Jimmy Carter, and every other leading Democrat on the face of this earth (except Hillary and possibly even Bill). And who can blame them? That is what the Republicans should be doing. It is what conventions are for.
Posted by: algasema | August 26th, 2008 at 9:08 am | Report this commentThe last refuge of the scoundrel is becoming a cry of racism rather than patriotism.
Corsi has more than enough valid points (and some loopy ones too) to make a New York Times bestseller, but the Left claims any criticism of the Obama campaign is somehow racist.
It isn’t.
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | August 26th, 2008 at 3:09 pm | Report this commentJoe Biden was brought in as an attack dog so Barack Hussein Obama can walk around with clean hands. He brings no other attributes to the position. And “change” with a 30 yr vet of Washington?? That’s a real change, right?
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