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Obama's VP Choice: Biden Has the Foreign Policy Gravitas & Barack's Got Charisma to Spare
One way to choose a running mate is the Electoral College calculation: What state or states, that could go either way, would the VP candidate add to the ticket? I'll leave that to the professional political consultants out there.
Another way to decide is based on issue-analysis.
Whether accurate or not, we have one candidate--McCain--who still seems to be perceived as a foreign policy/national security guru. (That perception's validity can be discussed at a later time and place.) The other candidate--Obama--has some holes in his resume in that policy sphere, holes that McCain may be able to exploit.
On the other hand, McCain is generally perceived to lack both knowledge and interest in domestic/economic affairs, and has not as yet done or said anything of substance to disabuse voters of that perception. Though not an economist or businessman, Obama's domestic policy credentials have not been questioned, though some of his specific policies have been challenged on their efficacity. But his interest in domestic affairs is beyond dispute.
For the Dems, who has been and currently is the undisputed, most knowledgeable and most articulate foreign policy/national security spokesperson the party has? It's good, ole, charisma-lacking, but gravitas-dripping Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.
Obama himself has enough charisma to fill Yankee Stadium many times over. McCain has as sort of pathetic charm that comes across occasionally, but is as charismatic as a tuna sandwich.
Biden's expertise in the Iraq adventure, his towering stature as an (almost) non-partisan expert on the issue--remember, even the Bush Adminstration privately sought his counsel--makes McCain's "shoot-from-the-hip" approach look dangerous, unthought-through, simplistic and confused, which it is.
Also, Biden has a long resume of speeches and talks that he has given on the Iraq subject. Never has he misspoke, and although Bush supporters may have disagreed with Biden's conclusions, he was never subjected to any type of discrediting based on lack of knowledge or partisanship. In other words, just the kind of teflon VP, Iraq expert running mate Barack needs.
McCain obviously needs a running mate with domestic policy credentials. Observing today's US economy, no one in the Rep Party jumps out as a likely choice.
MyBlog: http://ProteanPerspectives.blogspot.com
Comments (15)
biden is the best choice in my opinion.
June 6, 2008 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Biden is an entirely unnaceptable choice.
His support for the bankruptcy reform legislation that has exacerbated the current credit crisis is reason enough to oppose him.
June 6, 2008 4:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Biden is in the pocket of all the big banks and credit card companies, which makes him hardly better than Bush. Definately not Biden!
June 6, 2008 6:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excuse me?? Biden lacks charisma? Really? That might come as a surprise to many of those older, white women Obama is trying so hard to attract.
Trust me, charisma is in the eye of the beholder! He does just fine in that department, esp. with those who may not succumb to Obama's brand of it.
Also a lot of voters, men and women, who are uncomfortable with the newness and unfamiliarity of Barack Obama but really like and feel comfortable with John McCain (personally, if not his policies) are very likely to feel good about Joe Biden.
I think he would definitely help in the election but, more important really, be a valuable assistant in governing.
There were many reasons for people to support bankruptcy reform and all its effects weren't immediately obvious. I don't know Biden's reasons on that and would like to learn them. Also I don't know about his 'being in the pocket of the big banks' However, I have learned one thing in this campaign: which is to insist on facts to support global statements like that before I pay any attention to them.
June 6, 2008 6:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
There were many reasons that a person might have supported the bankruptcy reform bill, but no reasons that a Democrat would have. None save corruption or cronyism.
June 6, 2008 8:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
We do not need to take another Democratic Senator out of action. i don't think Obama lacks any foreign policy creds; why would Lugar have chosen him in 2006 to go to Russia?
We need a governor with the executive branch experience, one from the Mid-West or a Western state, as that is the new Democratic map that Obama is working.
McCain is admittedly weak on the economy. A governor has to balance the budget every year; it is mandated by law. The government's impacts people's lives more directly at that level.
June 6, 2008 7:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you think the republicans are going to allow Obama to hang his foreign policy expertise on Lugar sending him to Russia, non-USSR Russia at that, you're making a huge miscalculation.
Remember, McCain's never as much run a candy store, let alone administer a state government, so that's not an issue he can deploy against Obama.
Obama needs his foreign policy flack reinforced, and Biden's the most qualified to do that.
FB
June 6, 2008 8:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Correction: in last sentence of above post, "flack" should read "flank."
June 6, 2008 8:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
With respect, I think all the senior Senators can have Obama's back on foreign policy.
What he needs, desperately, is someone who can make the economic case. Economics is hard for someone who hasn't studied it. In debates, etc, they can come up with challenges that you really need economic depth to be able to answer. Technical questions re tax impact etc. One of them really tripped him up in one of the debates.
I'll go out on a limb here: I'm pretty sure McCain's going to choose Romney: he gives McCain his best chance at Michigan. Romney is devastating on economics. His attacks on Obama have been the most compelling I've seen. He makes the economic case better than McCain. What we need is someone who can be equally compelling.
I really wish Obama would take at least a week off campaigning, announcing some coverall platitudinous reason, but actually studying detailed economic pitfalls with senior economics advisers.
June 6, 2008 9:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Coincidental enough, my degree is in Economics.
McCain is sooooooo ignorant and soooooo completely uninterested in the subject that Barack needs no help on that front as far as a VP goes. Obama's mere interest in the subject will trump McCain's neglect of economic issues.
As for Romney, he made his fortune in the very kind of "unproductive" business of leveraged buyouts and various other paper shuffling schemes that were at the root of the credit crisis (which we are still in) and the totally un-economic rise in oil prices. He's a speculator. He's a master in playing the various derivative markets, markets which are largely unregulated, opaque and are currently producing the run-up in oil prices that affect everyone.
If McCain chooses Romney, Obama's economic advisers will be able to paint Romney as a brilliant but evil "speculator" who made his millions at the expense of average Joe's and Joan's. That's what I'd do if I advised Barack.
Barack has not displayed ignorance or uninterest in the economy. But I agree with you that he should immerse himself in the subject; he can leave foreign policy and Iraq to Biden, if he picks him as VP.
FB
June 6, 2008 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well I agree with you I chose my words badly. What Romney is so good at - in terms of public perception - is portraying himself as someone who understands the economy and how to run it; he made a compelling fist of it in Michigan during the primary.
I'm glad I posted as I did: it provoked your response which made me feel a great deal better!
I don't know whether you'll come back to this thread and see this but, if you do, I'd like your take on this.
Oil prices: the fundamental reason behind the huge oil prices is OPEC supply. The cost to ordinary folk is terrible now.
The primary rhetoric during the primaries from both Clinton and Obama was long-haul stuff. (Fuel efficiency standards etc.)
How do you see him winning this debate in the short-run?
June 6, 2008 11:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Chief Minister of OPEC said this week that, based on supply and demand calculations, the price of a barrel of oil should be between $60-$70 a barrel.
What has happened is that, much like during the tech-bubble in the US stock market in the late 1990s, speculators have invaded what has been traditionally a market dominated by actual participants in the oil industry. The latter used the futures market to hedge/smooth the price they would have to pay for actual oil by buying and selling futures' contracts. These people were real-life oil people.
The new players could not care less about the real "use" value of oil; they care only about the value of the contract they have purchased, much as the tech-bubble "investors" ignored the value of the underlying company they invested in, but cared only about the "exchange" value of the stock certificate they purchased.
In the case of the tech-bubble, the effects were limited to the market players; but with essential commodities such as oil, corn, wheat and so, the effects trickle down to real people.
The USGovernment is slowly catching on to the dangers of allowing hedge funds to drive up prices of necessity-commodities. Investigations have been launched, and a re-vamping of regulatory policy is imminent, even by the Bush Administration.
As to the surrender-type policies being advocated by the Dems, I think it's a losing strategy as well as an ignorant one. It's telling us, like poor Jimmy Carter did in the 1970s, that the party's over. It's also telling the industrializing nations such as India and China that they have no chance of enjoying the economic (materialistic) prosperity that has been enjoyed by the Western (and Japanese) economies.
That is no strategy for victory. And it is based on false premises as well.
Thanks for responding.
FB
June 7, 2008 12:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Fran,
TPM is a very liberal site, so what I am about to write is going to seem almost fascistic to most TPM readers.
But you got me so riled up with the oil question, I had to continue writing.
The surrender advocates, of both parties, are acquiescing to the greatest theft of our nation's wealth in history.
The transfer of Western oil-consuming wealth to oil-producing enemy nations such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, without as much as a whimper of complaint from the Western Democracies will make Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s pale in comparison.
The Western Democracies need to make clear to the oil producing nations that the continuation of this theft will not be permitted. Most of these Middle East nations are ruled by regimes that would be considered illegitmate by Western standards....Last I checked, Kings, Sulatns, Emirs, Royal families were not the wave of the future.
These regimes hold power by brute force, often with the material assistance of the Western democracies--could Saudi even build a hand gun by themselves?--and that assistance must be contingent upon access to oil at reasonable prices.
The singular national security issue today is the price of oil. Eventually some national politician is going to realize that fact and act accordingly.
[The bellicose tone of this post is way out of tune with TPM and its liberal/progressive readership. At least it's a change of pace.]
FB
June 7, 2008 12:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well please I'm not at all interested in labels being thrown at you. And I have to say at the outset that I suffered through Eco 1 & 2 miserably (I was too hung up on the politics of it all to throw myself into simply taking the models as simply theoretical constructs that I needed to understand.) So you're talking to someone who does understand the basic rudiments but never mastered it. Funnily enough I did MUCH better at economics history. :-)
You have got me slightly confused with these two posts. I understood the first one re the hedge funds instantly. But don't quite see how the second post meshes with it.
What I'd be most interested to know now is whether or not you read the posts that were here a little while ago - maybe a week? - by someone talking about Europe being about to come down on all this - talking about negotiating a new Bretton Woods. But that post seemed to be far more about the financial markets more broadly rather than the hedge funds.
I'd love to know if Stiglitz has come out on all this. (I have an amateur's sort of dependence on him as an authority I trust) Mostly I suppose because he had the guts to come out against the World Bank and IMF.
I clearly need to take my away from this incessant and almost compulsive obession with the Presidential campaign and go and do some delving into all this on the net. I really do want to know more about Europe taking on the markets' current functioning. (That post I was referring to was talking about taking on London.)
But back to what you were saying in your second post, clearly this is something that preoccupies you: what actually interest me more is that I get frustrated because my rudimentary attachment to economic rationalism (as I understand it) is that you can't possibly be talking about complying with the rest of the world in trying to address climate change WITHOUT getting away from the dependence on oil; and it seems to me - simplistic maybe - that you can't possibly reduce dependence on oil in the short run without incurring massive price hikes: the price of oil to the consumer has to go up to deter us from using it and it takes massive expenditure on alternative forms and public transport especially to actually get anywhere in combating global warming.
I don't know if I'm getting across what worries me about the presidential primary controversies.
What I'm getting at is that the candidates are saying they're going to bring down the price of oil. I don't have any sense of wht they're proposing to do to achieve that and I also believe it's utterly antithetical to what they say is another key goal: combating climate change.
June 7, 2008 1:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ms. Fran,
I am not at all convinced that "climate change" is the result of human activity.
The US Weather Service has more super-computers than the Pentagon and NASA combined. Yet just predicting tomorrow's weather is so complex a scientific challenge that their success rate is barely better than 50%.
The fact that a politician--Al Gore--is the leader of the Global Warming movement makes me suspect. The equations that go into predicting even the next hour's weather are so complicated that I cannot accept the supposition that Gore has any real scientific understanding of the phenomenon he is championing.
I have no interest in destroying the earth.
But I am unwilling to stipulate to the hypothesis that climate change is a human-induced phenomenon. The climate of earth has changed over geological time; for much of that time humans did not even exist.
I no more trust Gore on climate change than would I trust him on Quantum Mechanics.
[Note: These scare tactics and predictions have been around since the time of Malthus, at least.]
FB
PS-Tell me you look somewhat like Jennifer Alba, and I'm in love. =)
[Sexist, I know.]
June 7, 2008 1:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
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