Biden is a strange choice for Obama. Consider the following reasons:
* Biden has been a Senator for thirty-six years, one of the longest-serving in either party, hardly the kind of "change" that Obama uses as his campaign mantra. Indeed, Biden is a true Washington "insider," who has failed twice in his own efforts to secure the Democratic presidential nomination, precisely because he is not well known "outside the Beltway."
* Biden will be sixty-six years old in November, just six years younger than McCain, not exactly the kind of "youthful" image Obama has tried to project. And while Biden was running in his first Senate election in 1972, McCain was trapped in a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp.
* Biden has made his reputation in foreign policy, thus highlighting Obama's inexperience in that critical area. In fact, the McCain campaign has already run television commercials featuring Biden's criticisms earlier this year of Obama's foreign policy positions. Some have compared Biden's role in any future Obama Administration to Dick Cheney's role in the present Bush Administration, hardly the picture one would think the Democrats wanted to convey.
* Biden's home state of Delaware has only three votes in the Electoral College, and was considered safe for the Democrats to begin with. He adds no new constituencies to Obama's campaign, and puts no typically Republican states at risk.
Biden has one other major problem: a lack of discipline that reveals itself in his inability to stop talking. Of course, Biden is not alone in Washington in liking to hear himself talk, but his unique capacity has given many Americans the chance to learn a new word: logorrhea. Dictionaries define logorrhea as "excessive and often incoherent wordiness." That is Joe Biden personified. Unless he is carefully scripted and shielded from contact with the press, it is almost inevitable that he will talk himself into difficulty.
