Biden His Time

It seems that Barack Obama has made the most sane, most reasonable, and least radical choice of VP candidates in the person of grizzled veteran and complete "Washington insider" Joe Biden. Biden adds immense gravitas (albeit of the liberal hue) to the ticket and could very well deflect concerns as to Obama's lack of experience, potential passivity in the face of opposition both domestic and international, and his tendency to go abstract and deal in generalizations rather than tangibles and specifics. Plus, Biden's two-fisted, in-your-face, traditional Northeastern urban liberal machine style of politics serves as a counterbalance to Obama's almost Gandhi-esque aura of tranquillity. Now, none of this is to say that the Democrat ticket is the least bit attractive to anyone concerned with liberty, or that their collective policies are going to spell anything but disaster for the economy and social structure; heavens no, I would never claim that! All I'm saying is that, given the baseline of liberalism today -- i.e. that it is a reeking cesspool of discharged political offal, and awful ideas -- the choice of Biden makes sense. What would _not_ have made sense, of course, is the choice of Hillary Clinton. She would have made Obama her -- if you'll pardon the expression -- bitch for the next four years, and wound up running things while her degenerate husband wandered around smirking and posing for all of his obsequious admirers. The good news also -- I think -- is that Biden, despite his innate aggressiveness, is unlikely to quite follow in the footsteps of Dick Cheney, who -- as they say, euphemistically -- "redefined the vice-presidency" by, basically, making it into the presidency and making the presidency into a ceremonial position (if that). I think Biden will, to use the term in a new way, "know his place" and keep it, while supplying consistent and strong support for whatever Obama comes up with, and acting as executive branch attack dog, in the time-honored tradition of Nixon, LBJ, Agnew, etc. when they were VP.

Of course, it's also possible that Obama/Biden won't win, and the polls do seem to indicate that Obama has not quite taken over the electorate as yet. And yes, there will undoubtedly be a "Biden bounce", but then we will have to wait to see if any of it sticks. In the meantime, McCain is successfully portraying himself as "mini-me" to Bush (who, in turn, is "mini-me" to Cheney -- so how pathetic does that make McCain?), threatening to attack everyone all the time the minute he takes office, while at the same time opening wide the gates to a tidal wave of unskilled immigrants, and adopting an attitude of benign neglect as far as "conservative issues" are concerned.

Bob Barr is looking better every day.