Historically the Vice President position was the "booby prize" for the guy who got second place in the Presidential Election. The Vice Presidency, aside from having the ear of the President, constitutionally is a powerless position: you serve as the chairman of the Senate, but unless there is a tie you don't vote. And given that the Senate uses parliamentarian rules of order, the chairman ("President of the Senate") really does little more than keep track of who is next in line to speak and in what order people ask for the floor--a thankless booby price for the man who would be Leader of the Free World.
In more recent times we got "tickets", where the President and Vice President run from the same party, and in recent times, in addition to serving as the head of the Senate the Vice President is often put in charge of a number of ad-hoc committees and executive positions. So the Vice President, rather than being a powerless (but necessary) job, has gained a fair amount of executive power in service to the Presidential Administration. And we've come to look at the Vice President as a more powerful position--though Dan Quayle proves that you can have a complete idiot as Vice President and not undermine the effectiveness of an administration.
Joe Biden as Vice President for Barack Obama is an interesting choice, in that Joe Biden is a down-and-dirty quick-witted fighter to Obama's aloof bodhisattvac public face. From a campaign perspective it makes a sort of sense: they have dissimilar personalities and the Obama campaign can then blame the necessary negative campaigning that will evolve during this election cycle on a "somewhat out of control Biden."
It's an interesting choice. I'm not negative in the sense that the Associated Press was:
Analysis: Biden pick shows lack of confidence. Vice Presidential picks are always done to extend the appeal of the ticket, so you could almost say every VP pick was due to a "lack of confidence." As I noted elsewhere, I think Lieberman would make a very interesting McCain pick--balloons have already been sent up, and Lieberman would give McCain (and by extension the Republican Ticket) appeal to the left-of-center undecideds that would put the GOP over the top both nationally and (more importantly) locally.
Nor would I worry about things like this commercial, which I link to for its amusement value:
While amusing, what people forget is that if you pick a front-runner in the party campaign election for your running mate, the record will be full of comments like this. As memory serves, the Carter Administration ran a similar commercial when Reagan selected George Bush as his running mate; George Bush was not too kind to Ronald Reagan's age or stamina during the GOP debates.
What surprises me is the negativity from the established press. In many ways the national press has shown its liberal credentials over and over again; to see it turn against the DNC and start discussing its support for McCain, especially this early in the election cycle, is extremely unusual. In the past the DNC holds the early lead and the GOP then plays catch-up: the election is decided by how well the GOP catches up to the DNC front-runner.
But this election cycle is proving to be different enough to make this entire thing very interesting...
Update I'm a McCain supporter, but don't take my own comments about Biden as some sort of "oh, look; I think they've screwed the pooch; good for me!" assertion. The
process of the election campaign fascinates me; it reminds me of a very complex game of Chess played with limited resources. (Somewhere in both parties are very well-paid computer scientists working closely with demographers and pollsters calculating the optimal campaign solution.) And process wise, like any game of Chess, you can appreciate the other side's move, even if you are rooting for your own side.
Biden is an interesting gambit for Obama. We'll see how it plays out.
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