Justus For All

I haven’t ever been very impressed with Joe Biden, even considering that he is a Democrat and I generally am not.  He mostly has struck me as a tiresome windbag who is far more impressed with himself then he really has a right to be.  Beyond that, I admit that I don’t know a whole lot about his particular positions on the issues, although I am fairly well aquainted with his foriegn policy positions.  In Foreign Policy he is generally a slightly hawkish liberal, but I think his most defining characteristic is that rather then being guided by any definable principles, he seems to simply hew pretty closely to the middle of the road position as far as popularity within the democratic party is concerned.  Hence is votes for the Iraq war, his opposition to the surge, and a host of other votes over the years.  He purpose seems to add gravitas from his long expirience to whatever policy the democrats as a whole seem most behing rather then leading or influencing opinion himself.

All that being said, the most interesting thing about Biden as VP to me isn’t how good a VP he would be (what all does it take to attend state funerals anyway) but what picking Biden does for Obama and also what it says about Obama.

It seems to me that this is a horrible choice for Obama to make.  Obama’s main message which also is his key to victory is ‘Change’ and Biden is about as unchangy as you can get.  He has been in the Senate for 36 years, and in many ways is a very ‘estblishment’ kind of guy (Bankruptcy Bill anyone?)   More signifigantly, this pick seems to me to highlight the idea that Obama doesn’t have enough expirience.  I think you can sometimes overcome an expirience deficit in a narrow area with a VP pick, George W. picking Cheney for Foreign Policy expirience being an example, I don’t think you can do it for overall expirience.  If Obama needs Biden’s expirience, why didn’t the Democrats just pick Biden is I think going to be in the back of some peoples mind.  Obama, I think, needed to argue that expirience was not as important as values and vision, rather then trying to close the expirience gap with a VP.  The Biden pick seems to me to reinforce the message that expirience is important and that Obama doesn’t have it.

Generally speaking, I think Obama has campaigned pretty poorly since the end of the primary.  He has seemed to me to cautious and defensive.  The Biden pick is a further example of that.  It doesn’t seem to me to be the best way for him to win an election.  I would have picked a VP that underscored the freshness and excitment that Obama has to offer, rather then someone who does the exact opposite.