- perfect example of a lunch-bucket Democrat made good
- ..bizarre act of plagiarism doomed 1987 presidential hopes
- ..(pro-choice) Roman Catholic who instinctively understands... anxieties that drove his fellow Papists to embrace Reagan in the 1980s, and makes them wary of Obama
- chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...
Next week, the story will certainly be on Palin.
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Joe Biden brings both strengths and weaknesses to the Democratic ticket
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HIS first run for the presidency collapsed, in 1987, after a bizarre act of plagiarism. Bizarre because Joe Biden not only borrowed the words of another politician, Neil Kinnock, the leader of the British Labour Party. That is par for the course in modern politics. He borrowed his life-story, too. He claimed that he was the first Biden to go to university and that his ancestors had worked down a coal mine, both untrue. The only thing he did not claim was to be Welsh.
This was doubly damaging because Mr Biden, like the man whose identity he tried to purloin, is a notorious wind-bag. He loves nothing more than the sound of his own voice. And when he talks the sentences and paragraphs tumble over each other with no obvious end in sight. Members of the audience just have to cross their fingers and hope.
But Barack Obama’s choice of Mr Biden as his running mate has nevertheless been greeted with widespread applause—and not just from loyal Democrats. The senior senator for Delaware not only brings white hair to the Democratic ticket. He also brings a (true) personal story that compliments Mr Obama’s autobiography. Mr Obama’s rally in Springfield, Illinois, on August 23rd, where he introduced his new running mate to the world, was his best performance for some time.
Mr Biden is a perfect example of a lunch-bucket Democrat made good. His father was born polo-playing rich but ended up poor, thanks to a series of bad investments. Young Joe grew up in a solid but struggling working-class family in Scranton, Pennsylvania, before moving to Wilmington, Delaware. He worked his way through college and made it to the Senate by the age of 29.
He remains popular in his native Pennsylvania, one of America’s largest swing states. He is a (pro-choice) Roman Catholic who instinctively understands the cultural anxieties that drove his fellow Papists to embrace Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and continue to make them wary of Mr Obama. He is also one of the poorest members of the Senate, an institution which is threatening to revert to its Gilded Age status as a millionaires’ club. He endured an unspeakable personal tragedy, shortly after his first run for the Senate in 1972, when his wife and daughter were killed by a drunk driver. He travels home to his family in Delaware every day on Amtrak, and lives in a surprisingly modest house. All this makes him appealing to Obama-wary working-class voters.
Mr Biden is one of the most experienced foreign-policy hands in Washington. He has been the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2007, with a particular interest in eastern Europe, and is on first-name terms with many foreign politicians. A fortnight ago Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia, invited him to visit his embattled country. He is also “a happy warrior”—a man who relishes the pig-wrestling side of politics, and can deliver a killer punch without seeming malicious.
This is a perfect compliment to Mr Obama’s biggest weaknesses, his wafer-thin résumé on foreign affairs. It will stand him in good stead in the vice-presidential debate, which could prove surprisingly important in a close race. The fact that he is a good friend of John McCain—the two men have served together in the Senate for two decades—could also help the Democrats to wrong-foot their opponent.
Mr Biden’s strengths extend beyond the campaign trail. Dick Cheney is hardly a name to conjure with in Democratic circles. But Mr Biden brings some of the same qualities to the Democratic ticket that Mr Cheney brought to the Republican one in 2000. At 65, he has no choice but to sublimate his personal political ambitions into those of his boss; and, as an old Washington hand, he knows how to get things done. Mr Obama’s supporters seem to believe that all they need to do is huff and puff and the old order in Washington will come tumbling down. Mr Biden understands that, in order to achieve results, you need to know how to manage committees and flatter power-brokers.
The Republicans have wasted no time in charging that Mr Biden undercuts his boss’s message of “change”. But this is transparently self-serving. If Mr Obama had picked a less experienced man—Tim Kaine, the governor of Virginia, another swing state, for example—they would be mocking the Democratic ticket as lightweight. Still, the man who tried to borrow Mr Kinnock’s biography has worrying weaknesses.
The most obvious, of course, is his mouth. The Republicans have already produced a video of Mr Biden arguing that Mr Obama is too inexperienced for the top job, and proclaiming that he would “be honoured to run with or against” Mr McCain. Mr Biden once described Mr Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”. There will be plenty more where that came from.
A second problem is that his judgment in his major area of expertise, foreign policy, has proved up and down. He argued that Iraq should be partitioned, into Sunni, Shia and Kurdish regions, and stuck to his harebrained scheme long after it had been debunked both by American military commanders and by Iraqi politicians. Like Mr Obama, he bet against the success of the “surge”. All grist to the Republican mill.
Mr Biden’s biggest problem, however, is that he is not Hillary Clinton. Mrs Clinton won 18m votes in the Democratic primary; Mr Biden dropped out after coming fifth in the Iowa caucuses. Mr Obama’s advisers have whispered that the reason Mrs Clinton was not considered for the vice-presidency is that she is a Washington insider who voted in favour of the Iraq war. But Mr Biden is also a Washington insider who voted in favour of the Iraq war. Far from bringing Mrs Clinton’s supporters back into the fold, Mr Biden’s elevation may look like just another snub.
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