On this stuff--the controversy over whether Barack Obama should have picked an old politico like Joe Biden as his VP partner--I am lucky I can watch from the
sidelines since I vote Libertarian, which saves me a lot of grief,
especially of the "least bad choice" variety (or as one wit put it, "the
evil of two lessers").
But from the sidelines, Obama had a balancing act here: Another Change
person like himself would be young and not fully tainted and thus
vulnerable to McCain attacks on lack fo experience that have proven (to
my actual surprise) effective recently. Biden takes that club away from
McCain. McCain can call Obama a hypocrite for choosing an old warhorse
(like McCain) but the foreign-affairs club and the inexperience club are
both out of reach now.
Since Biden is practically McCain's twin on everythign that McCain has
been pushing, he does a good job of neutralizing McCain's most powerful
messages. Biden's wild-card big mouth will be a ticking bomb for months,
but on the other hand his wit and tendency to say naughty things might
give him something of a 'by' among voters who hate politicians and
politics. It will annoy those who wanted a clean break from politics as
usual (boy, will it!) but the Obama supporters can always argue that
Biden is a savvy political-campaign chess move that puts the "old-boy
network" guy in the secondary, VP position, whereas on the Republican
side the Old Boy guy is the top dog. If you want any hope of change,
there is only one choice.
Other than becoming discouraged and staying home, of course. Which is
always the ongoing danger when your campaign relies heavily on arousing
the youth vote or the disaffected vote--they become discouraged easily
and give up. Obama's gift of oratory will have to do a lot of heavy
lifting for the next couple of months....
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