Sunday, August 24, 2008

Biden

Some disconnected thoughts on the selection of our 47th vice president:

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Who at the Obama campaign thought it would be a good idea to wake everyone up at 4:30 AM? Or did they assume that anyone who signed up to get the text message was already a supporter, so it didn't matter? Or, since they tend to think these things through, was this a subliminal message so that millions of half-asleep people would absorb "Obama-Biden" deeply into their subconscious?

[UPDATE: It has been pointed out that this was unacceptably east-coast-centric. Let me revise that to "Who at the Obama campaign thought it would be a good idea to wake everyone in the continental US up at times ranging from 1:30 to 4:30 AM?"]

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Comparisons between Biden and the other VP hopefuls, both on who would be a better vice president and who would contribute more to the ticket's electoral prospects, are ultimately just educated speculation. But one thing is objectively true: Delaware has a Democratic governor. This means that the election of Biden, unlike many of the other senators whose names have appeared on short lists (e.g. Bayh, Dodd, Reed), won't result in the loss of a Democratic senator. (Yes, Delaware's governor is a lame duck, but in the event that a Republican wins, Biden can simply resign from the Senate before Gov. Minner leaves office.)

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David Brooks is a concern troll. In Friday's column, he writes that he hopes Obama will pick Biden as his running mate. Now it is no secret that Brooks is a Republican. And there are two reasons why someone might have a preference for who the opposing party nominates: 1) They think they're less likely to get elected. (I must admit that I still find myself rooting for Mitt "Who let the dogs out?" Romney on the Republican side.) 2) (the more mature reason, I suppose) They think that, in the event they get elected, they're going to do a better job.

So it gives extreme pause when the first of Brooks's professed reasons for why he's rooting for Biden is that Biden will help Obama in "connecting with working-class voters". This is an electability issue that has nothing to do with Biden's fitness to be VP. There are three possibilities for what's going on here: 1) Brooks wants the Democratic ticket to win. (Not so likely.) 2) Brooks is being disingenuous, and singing the praises of a candidate who he thinks is more likely to lose. 3) Brooks is so much a creature of the Beltway media that he has completely forgotten the difference between electability and fitness for the job. I'm putting even money on 2 and 3.

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I do remember the 1988 election (I saw "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy" on live TV), but (being 8 years old at the time) I guess I didn't start paying attention until after Biden was already out of the race. So my first memory of Biden was a few years later, when he was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Clarence Thomas hearings, and portrayed by Kevin Nealon. Will SNL bring Nealon back now?

8 comments:

  1. Obama/Biden leaves a hole wide nuff for a Mack Truck but only with Sarah Palin as the driver!

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  2. Other Senators possibly on the short list came from states with Democratic governors: Webb (VA - Kaine) and Clinton (NY - Patterson. Plus there were plenty of experienced non-Senator candidates.

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  3. Didn't Lloyd Bentsen deliver the "you're no Jack Kennedy" line? What did Biden have to do with it?

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  4. Didn't Lloyd Bentsen deliver the "you're no Jack Kennedy" line?

    Yes.

    What did Biden have to do with it?

    Nothing. The point was that I was old enough to be paying attention to the election on October 5, 1988 (the vice-presidential debate), but not on or before September 23, 1987 (when Biden dropped out), so my first memories of Biden weren't until October 1991 (the Thomas hearings).

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  5. Biden brings with him a state that has 3 or 4 electoral votes. A real asset. People aren't going to vote for Obama because Biden had to work for a living at some point in his life. Who was the President that was the best friend ever of the working man? FDR, who came from a wealthy, patrician "old money" family.
    Biden supported the war in Iraq. Obama criticized Hillary for having "bad judgment" for also supporting the war which he opposed from the beginning, but now he can't use that argument against McCain since his own running mate did the same thing.

    I stand by what I stated here on your blog a couple of months ago, and which upset you terribly...Obama is going to lose. Period.
    One of the reasons I gave was his ultra-liberal voting record which you claim is in tune with American public opinion. I stated that the American people do not want a new New Deal and only two truly liberal Presidents running on liberal platforms have been elected since World War II, Truman in 1948 and LBJ in 1964. ..well, if you read the long New York Times about Obama's economic policy, it points out that he wants to carry out a modified form of Clinton's policies, while praising Reagan's rejection of wasteful Big Government. So much for your new New Deal. (He does favor large tax cuts for the poor and middle class which will be financed by "pulling out of Iraq", YEAH, SURE!

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  6. Biden brings with him a state that has 3 or 4 electoral votes.

    Make that zero, since Delaware was in the Obama column anyway. But it has been shown that the idea that a VP nominee will deliver a particular state is highly questionable at best.

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  7. It is not unreasonable, and I would say it is quite likely, that David Brooks actually is rooting for Obama to win. Times editorial writers may not officially endorse candidates, but Brooks's writing for the paper as well as his commentary for PBS has been very pro-Obama. Remember that Brooks is "liberals' favorite conservative" precisely because, by the standards of the the non-UWS-centric world, he's not all that conservative. If Jim Leach--a Republican congressman who served in the Nixon administration--can endorse Obama, I don't see why Brooks couldn't vote for him.

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  8. Ted writes:
    Obama/Biden leaves a hole wide nuff for a Mack Truck but only with Sarah Palin as the driver!

    So how's that working out for you?

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