Who's Joe Bidden?

My sister was drawn in by the Presidential race this year, and she actually watched a couple of the debates. After one of them, she called me up and said "Who's Joe Bidden?"

Well, now she'll know.

Of everyone on the short list, Biden was clearly the best. He's spent a lifetime in the Senate, so it's a pick that fills in the gaps and doesn't reinforce, but it should be mentioned that Dick Cheney, a "fill-in-the-gaps" pick for George W. Bush, did pretty well for the ticket from an electoral standpoint. What he did for the nation is another matter, but I don't see Obama offering the same kind of power to his VP.

On most issues, Biden is pretty solidly in the center of the Democratic Party. Not a fiery progressive, but not a conservative Democrat. He's a liberal whose lifetime voting record includes some working across the aisle, of course, but he's pretty clear in his beliefs. His LCV score is 84, and his record on the middle class, actually, is solidly progressive. The bankruptcy bill was horrendous, and being the Senator from MBNA doesn't mollify it, but his replacement (and I'm going on the record that it'll be his son Beau, the Attorney General of Delaware who's headed to Iraq next year) won't vote against banking industry interests, either, and those parochial votes are inevitable when an industry is concentrated in a state or region. I hope this doesn't dissuade Obama from seeking bankruptcy bill reform as he has advocated.

On foreign policy, he's incredibly knowledgeable and obviously an asset, though he does represent the foreign policy establishment view much of the time, which is too interventionist for my taste. He voted for the war but sought in the Biden-Lugar amendment and end date for the authorization, and he always fretted about what happens the day after we enter Baghdad. That concern was proven prophetic.

Most important, he has the traditional profile of a Vice President - he's a hard-core attack dog. Here:

Taking aim at McCain’s foreign policy approach earlier this year, Biden said:

John McCain remains wedded to the Bush Administration’s myopic view of a world defined by terrorism. … He would continue to allow a tiny minority to set the agenda for the overwhelming majority. It is time for a total change in Washington’s world view.

In an interview with ThinkProgress in May, Biden criticized McCain’s “overwhelming lack of sophistication when it comes to foreign policy.”

Biden has called the Bush administration “the worst administration in American foreign policy in modern history, maybe ever. … Every single thing they’ve touched has been a near disaster.” And in an interview last year, he suggested that “we should be acquiring and accumulating” information “for possibly bringing criminal charges against members of this administration at a later date.”

The GOP is out with an attack ad about Biden, saying he thought Obama wasn't ready to be President in a recent debate, and dredging up a 2005 quote that Biden "would be honored to run with or against John McCain." But that's a short-term issue. In the long term, Biden will attack, and attack, and attack some more. And he's extremely comfortable making the Democratic argument on national security. Ezra Klein offered the best take on this a couple months ago:

In the 2008 election, he was the only Democrat who really figured out how to talk about Republicans and foreign policy. All the other candidates on the stage started from the presumption that Republicans were 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. Biden dispensed with all that. He started from the position that Republicans had been catastrophic failures on foreign policy, and their ongoing claims to competence and leadership should be laughed at, and even mocked.

When Rudy Giuliani said, simply, "America will be safer with a Republican president," Obama responded with a traditional, more-in-sadness-than-in-anger statement. "Rudy Giuliani today has taken the politics of fear to a new low and I believe Americans are ready to reject those kind of politics. America’s mayor should know that when it comes to 9/11 and fighting terrorists, America is united." The release goes on in this way for eight more lines.

Biden, by contrast, laughed at Giuliani. He mocked him. "The irony is, Rudy Giuliani, probably the most underqualified man since George Bush to seek the presidency, is here talking about any of the people here," said Biden at one of the debates. "Rudy Giuliani... I mean, think about it! Rudy Giuliani. There's only three things he mentions in a sentence -- a noun, a verb, and 9/11. There's nothing else!" Giuliani, of course, took umbrage, and said Biden lacked foreign policy experience. This led to my favorite YouTube of the campaign, in which Biden dismantles Giuliani, live on television, while walking to his car.

That's exactly what you need in a VP. Lieberman was terrible as an accommodating drip in 2000. Edwards was terrible as a Sunshine Boy in 2004. Biden is the more traditional model.

Overall, Obama shows his confidence in picking someone with a high profile and outsized ego, and saying that he'll be able to handle him. Good choice, especially when considering the alternatives given.