More Responses to Obama's Choice

Today is the day after Joe Biden was introduced to the American public as the running mate on the Democratic ticket. And responses continue to pour in.

• Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen write, in Politico, that Barack Obama's selection of Joe Biden as his running mate tells us five things about the presumptive presidential nominee:
  
  
  1. He's fixing for a fight.
  
  
  2. He's a lot more conventional than advertised.
  
  
  3. He’s insecure about security.
  
  
  4. He’s more worried about Lunchbox Joe than Bubba.
  
  
  5. He doesn't hold a grudge — or at least he doesn't let it get in the way.
  
  I won't elaborate on the points. The post is short. I recommend that all my readers take a few minutes to read it for themselves.


• In what is sure to become familiar fare (for those who watch the Democratic convention this week, it will be familiar by the time Biden gives his acceptance speech), the Washington Post writes in glowing terms of Biden's life of "comebacks" of which the latest is his emergence as Obama's running mate after dropping out of the presidential race in the wake of an ignominious loss in Iowa.
  
  "Setbacks are followed by successes" in Biden's life and career, write Eli Saslow and Amy Goldstein in the Post, "and the cycle repeats. A tragic car accident, brain aneurysms, a plagiarism scandal, two failed presidential runs — nothing has permanently derailed him."
  
  
• But the response in the Washington Post hasn't been uniformly enthusiastic.
  
  In a group asssessment of the choice, Ed Rogers (former White House staffer under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush) says there are three reasons that Republicans should be glad Biden was the choice:
  
  
  1. Biden is not "another lightweight left-wing snob."
     
     "Everyone who cares about good government and serious politics can imagine him as president," Rogers says, "unlike Obama."
  
  
  2. "Biden has no following in a key state or among any particular voter group that will help Obama appeal to the center, nor does Biden reinforce Obama's appeal as an agent of change."
  
  
  3. "On any given day, there is a good chance that he will say something that could destroy the Democratic ticket or at least hurt its chances in November."
  
  Rogers says that, as a McCain supporter, he is "relieved and encouraged by the Biden selection."

(Pardon a personal note here: There is, I believe, something to be said about the fact that the Congress is, in part, to blame for the giant sucking sound we hear, of American lives and treasure being lost in Iraq. Congress has been the enabler of problematic behavior in this dysfunctional relationship that has existed between Congress and the Bush administration.

(But, as Congress has continued to authorize exorbitant defense spending, even as the economy has soured, are any of the presumptive nominees in a position to cast any stones?)

In the same assessment piece, Rutgers University history professor David Greenberg says, "Obama blew it." Greenberg says Obama's "over-the-top coyness damages him three ways —"


1. "First, it feeds the idea that he's a narcissist."


2. "Second, after so much hype, the choice could only disappoint. And really, we waited three months for Joe Biden?"


3. "Third, the protracted process short-sightedly allowed Hillary Clinton's name to re-enter the veepstakes — a move bound to further alienate her backers when she wasn't selected."
   
   We might get an idea how Hillary's supporters feel about the selection process when, on Wednesday, she is reportedly going to tell her delegates that they are free to vote for Obama on the first ballot. Will they still vote for Hillary? Will there be a floor demonstration?
   
   Stay tuned.


• Elizabeth Holmes writes, in the Wall Street Journal, that Biden and McCain share "striking similarities."
  
  "In their roughly 57 combined years in the U.S. Senate, Sen. McCain and Sen. Biden have forged much the same path," Holmes writes. "The pair has each earned a reputation for a quick tongue and become outspoken on foreign policy."


• The sub-headline on the article by Mike Dorning and James Oliphant in the Chicago Tribune summed up what the Obama camp appears to want voters to see when they look at the Obama-Biden ticket: "Experience. Foreign policy chops. Fists for a political fight. And, if Obama's lucky, an appeal to white working-class voters."


• Frankly, I expected to read something about the selection in Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times this morning.
  
  But she seems to be too busy obsessing over John McCain's "dalliances that caused his first marriage to fall apart after he came back from his stint as a P.O.W. in Vietnam" — and the "powerful get-out-of-jail-free card McCain had earned by not getting out of jail free."
  
  Although the article was written by someone who was adamantly anti-Hillary during the primaries, the argument sounds like it could have been fashioned by a feminist Clinton supporter in a general election campaign against McCain. It doesn't really seem like a plausible complaint coming from an Obama backer.
  
  Presumably, this is in response to the subject that was raised by the revelations in recent weeks about John Edwards' affair — although Edwards is never mentioned in Dowd's column today.
  
  And Edwards only appeared to threaten Obama's run to the nomination briefly — and in a marginal sort of way, at that, after finishing a fairly distant second to him in the Iowa caucus on January 3. In fact, Edwards found himself competing with Clinton for second place that night. When he came in far behind both Obama and Clinton the next week in New Hampshire, Edwards prepared to throw in the towel.
  
  Perhaps Dowd will have something to say about Biden in her next regularly scheduled column — which presumably will be Wednesday, the day Biden is supposed to accept the nomination.


• Dowd's colleague, Frank Rich, doesn't mention the running mate, either — except tangentially. But he may have provided a hint of what may be to come when the Democrats convene this week in Denver.
  
  "Change We Can Believe In" was an effective slogan during the Democrats' "familial brawl," Rich says in the New York Times, but now the opponents are McCain and the Republican Party. The message must be blunt.
  
  So it's time, Rich says, to put to rest "Change We Can Believe In" in favor of something like "Change Before It’s Too Late."
  
  If so, perhaps that puts the Biden selection into its proper perspective.

If that doesn't do the trick, here's something that might.

Yesterday, I wrote that the selection "was made with no apparent consideration given to the effect it might have on the electorate in November."

But Dan Balz raises a point in the Washington Post that I hadn't thought of.

"The die may have been cast for Biden ... when Russian forces invaded Georgia this month," Balz writes. "Until then, Obama may have believed he had more latitude in his choice, that he could worry less about dealing with his perceived weaknesses and instead pick a running mate who would more clearly buttress the change and generational messages at the heart of his candidacy.

"Once the tanks rolled, the weight of evidence shifted toward someone who would raise no questions in the area of national security. ... Among those under serious consideration, Biden, 65, was at the top on national security credentials."

In that Washington Post assessment piece I mentioned earlier, Todd Harris, a former McCain spokesman, refers to the Russia-Georgia clash and writes that Biden "brings decades of foreign policy experience to the ticket — and more than a little baggage."

Another example of how unforeseen events have the power to move campaigns in unexpected ways.