Last November, a group of
NEWSWEEK editors (including yours truly) asked Sen. Joe Biden over lunch
whether he'd consider serving as Hillary Clinton's vice president. His response? "I
love Bill
Clinton, but can you imagine being vice president?" he said. "I'm not
looking
for a ceremonial post." Biden, who was then running for the Democratic
presidential nomination, ruled out Secretary of State for the same
reason. At the time, his reluctance to serve under the Clintons was the
news. But in retrospect what's
striking is how he didn't nix the idea of signing on with Barack Obama as well. "In
a Barack administration, I'd probably be looked to a whole lot more,"
he told us.
"Now, I don't think [he] would ask me. But I think [he] would look to
me more." This was two months before Iowa.
Biden's desire to run alongside Obama has never been in doubt. In fact,
he only became more direct after dropping out the race, breaking with standard veepstakes protocol—smile,
blush and say you plan to keep your day job—to tell NBC's Brian
Williams "Of course I'll say yes" and, later, during a press conference
with Capitol Hill reporters,
boasting that he'd "
make a great vice president."
But then, the question was always whether Obama would be willing to
pick Biden—the kind of fellow whose candor (a virtue) has been known
to cross the line into cockiness (a vice). Obama clearly grappled with
the question. On the one hand, he told Time's Karen Tumulty last week, "I try to surround myself with people who are about getting the job done,
and who are not about ego, self-aggrandizement, getting their names in
the press." But on the other, "I'm not afraid to have folks
around me who complement my strengths and who are independent. I'm not
a believer in a government of yes-men." In the end, the second half of that equation won out, and Obama
announced in a text message sent to supporters around 3:00 a.m. that he had selected Biden as his running mate, ending, as
the New York Times puts it, "a two-month search that was conducted
almost entirely in secret" and "reflect[ing] a critical strategic choice by
Mr. Obama: To go with a running mate who could reassure voters about
gaps in his résumé, rather than to pick someone who could deliver a
state or reinforce Mr. Obama’s message of change."
The
case for Biden—which you'll hear the chattering classes repeat
ad
nauseam over the next few days—has long been clear. His main selling
point: the fact that his greatest strength—foreign-policy
experience—is widely seen as
Obama's greatest weakness. The Democratic Party's leading voice on
foreign affairs—he's chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
three times during his 35 years in Washington—Biden was the
only shortlister able to immediately and credibly go toe-to-toe
with Republican nominee John McCain on Iraq, terrorism, Afghanistan and
Pakistan.
As E.J. Dionne
recently noted, "Biden has been critical of Bush's approach to Iraq and the world for
the right reasons, and from the beginning." In the fall of 2002, he tried (with Republican Sens.
Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel)
to pass a more modest war resolution that put additional constraints on
Bush, and, like Obama, he was warning of the costs of a lengthy
occupation even before the war began. Since then, Biden has presented
and pushed a realistic proposal to divide Iraq into semi-autonomous
Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish regions—a plan that may appeal to Obama as
he works toward a responsible withdrawal—while arguing that the U.S.
should refocus its resources on Afghanistan, Pakistan and loose nukes
instead. (Conveniently, Obama agrees.) What's more, Biden's
son
Beau, the attorney
general of Delaware, will be deploying to Iraq this fall with his
national guard unit—meaning that Biden will be one of the few
politicians (like McCain, whose son Jimmy is also serving in Iraq) for
whom the war is viscerally, inescapably personal.
Biden
and Obama have already given us a sneak peak of how their partnership
will work. Back in July, Biden introduced legislation (with Lugar) that would triple non-military U.S. aid to Pakistan—legislation
that just so happened to materialize the same day Obama was set to
deliver a major speech in Washington on the future of U.S. national
security. Miraculously, Obama announced in the aforementioned address
that he would be "cosponsoring" the bill, immediately boosting his
bipartisan foreign-policy cred. Talk about a tag team. Meanwhile, Biden
rushed to the Illinois senator's defense later that week over charges
that he has
not adequately addressed Afghanistan as chairman of a Senate Foreign
Relations subcommittee, deftly defusing the issue with a letter to
South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (R) that the New Republic's Noam
Scheiber called "about
as impressive a case as I've seen a VP candidate make for himself." And
when war broke out in the Caucasus earlier this month, Biden swiftly
launched a fact-finding mission to Georgia—at the behest of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Chicago didn't object. Last week alone, Obama
mentioned Biden twice in speeches on the trail, "both times heralding his legislative leadership in East Asia."
Obviously,
the Delaware senator was not the only older, "whiter" foreign-policy pro
on Obama's list. But unlike, say, Sam Nunn, he's expert at
using his experience to score points on the trail, whether by
attacking Republican inanities—a role he relishes—or clarifying Democratic proposals. In other words, he's good at policy
and politics. As Ezra Klein
has written,
Biden dispenses with the traditional Democratic presumption that
"Republicans are strong on national security, and voters needed to be
convinced of their failures and then led to a place of support for a
Democratic alternative," choosing instead to start "from
the position that Republicans [have] been catastrophic failures on
foreign
policy, and their ongoing claims to competence and leadership should be
laughed at." Obama can't do that on his own—but he'll benefit greatly from the assistance of someone
who can. When Rudy Giuliani said, "America will be safer with a
Republican president," for example, Obama
spun out
some airy sentences about taking "the politics of fear to a new low"
and believing that "Americans are ready to reject those kind of
politics." Biden, in contrast, mocked "America's Mayor." "Rudy Giuliani
[is] probably the most underqualified man since George
Bush to seek the presidency," he said. "There's only three things he
mentions in
a sentence—a noun, a verb, and 9/11. There's nothing else!" This
serene self-confidence—even arrogance—made Biden the breakout star of
the Democratic debates, and it will likely add a necessary dash of
bareknuckle candor to Obama's "high road" bid. In other words, he'll
actually make an effective sidekick.
Biden's positives don't stop there. As a working-class Irish
Catholic with
an average-Joe speaking style and a heartbreaking personal story—his
wife and infant daughter died in
a car crash just a month after he was elected to the Senate in
1972—he'll help woo the blue-collar "ethnic whites" who were reluctant
to back Obama in
the primaries. Even though Delaware is a lock for the Dems, Biden was
born in purple Pennsylvania—where McCain was hoping to make
inroads—and has been a regular in the Philadelphia
media market for decades. He's already survived the public
scrutiny of two presidential campaigns—meaning no surprises. And while
his 35 years in the Senate don't reinforce Obama's "change" image, they
could actually prove essential to making change once Obama takes
office."When Biden was a young senator, he was mentored by Hubert Humphrey, Mike Mansfield and the like," notes the Times' David Brooks. "He was schooled in senatorial procedure in the days when the Senate
was less gridlocked. If Obama hopes to pass energy and health care
legislation, he’s going to need someone with that kind of legislative
knowledge who can bring the battered old senators together, as in days
of yore."
Biden, of course, is far from perfect. He's famously long-winded--and, as someone who's been his own boss for more than half his life, may not take well to directives from Chicago. He tends to generate gaffes—like, say, calling Obama "clean" and "articulate"—at
semi-regular intervals. His thousands of Senate votes will provide
Republicans with a treasure trove of oppo research. He was forced from
the 1988 presidential race after plagiarizing
a speech by Neil Kinnock, then-leader of the British Labour Party. He
kowtowed to Delaware's credit card industry by supporting a bankruptcy bill despised by liberal activists.
Despite his 2002 maneuvering, he ultimately voted to authorize the use
of force in Iraq—another unpopular position on the left. And,
conveniently enough, Biden's major criticism of Obama during the
primaries mirrors McCain's favorite line of attack—a fact that hasn't
gone unnoticed in Crystal City. "There has been no harsher critic of
Barack Obama's lack of experience than Joe Biden," said McCain
spokesman Ben Porritt in a statement to reporters this morning. "Biden
has denounced Barack Obama's poor foreign policy judgment and has
strongly argued in his own words what Americans are quickly realizing—that Barack Obama is not ready to be President." By 6:00 a.m.,
McCain had already cut an ad
packed with clips of Biden arguing that "the presidency is not
something that lends itself to on-the-job training" and saying he would
be "honored" to run with McCain. And there's more where that came from.
That said, many of Biden's weakness may turn out to be strengths. As NEWSWEEK's Jonathan Alter has pointed out, "if
Biden says something off-the-wall that sticks
in everyone's mind, all the better... The worry with Biden is that he
just can't help
himself. Obama may hope that he just can't stop himself from saying,
[for instance], that McCain is a hothead who shouldn't have his finger
on the
button. Obama can then denounce his No. 2's intemperate remarks even as
they sink in. This is what veep candidate were put on earth to do."
Meanwhile, the fact that Biden has echoed many widespread concerns
about Obama's relatively skimpy resume could actually work in the
nominee's favor. "Obama
and Biden were not close in the Senate, and Biden, amazingly, has still
not formally endorsed him," Alter writes. "But even this could be turned into an
advantage, as Biden encourages wary supporters of Hillary Clinton"—and others—"to
make the journey with him from suspicion of Obama to full embrace."
We'll know in November where that journey ends up. At the very least, Biden will make it an interesting ride.
This post was adapted from earlier Stumper items.
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