Before I wrote this, the political commentators and the news channels were agog over the still to be announced choice for Obama’s vice president. The junior Illinois senator was withholding his selection to build up the suspense and drama for his campaign stage show. All things considered, I agree with FDR’s VP from Texas, John Nance Garner, who said, “The vice-presidency isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit.” But he didn’t actually say ‘spit.’  Instead, he used a common term for another bodily fluid. The reporters of the day covered up his potty mouth. That remark was perhaps the highlight of his otherwise unremarkable term as vice-president.  

There really isn’t much to the VP job apart from presiding over the senate, voting to break a tie vote and going to state funerals for foreign leaders not important enough to rate the presence of the US president.  Of course the VP’s primary function is to succeed the president should the office become vacant owing to either death or removal from office. 

Senator Obama’s pick for the number two slot on the ticket might be of some political importance and the same goes for Senator McCain’s choice. Geographical location of whoever is selected could mean delivering a state where the contenders need help. JFK’s selection of LBJ probably had a lot to do with delivering Texas in 1960. Moreover, picking someone with actual executive experience would be a plus for either candidate, neither of whom has ever managed anything. Executives and managers are decision makers. Senators are deal makers and compromisers. 

We now know that Obama has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be his number two. The Delaware Senator has himself run for president but didn’t do all that well. He has a history of sticking his foot in his mouth in front of reporters as well as lifting parts or all of speeches made by other politicians.  

Back in 1987, Biden’s bid for the Democratic nomination was quashed when it was revealed by his rival Mike Dukakis that he had plagiarized a speech by British Labor Party leader and noted windbag Neil Kinnock. It might not have been so bad but Biden had a previous experience with plagiarism. The website www.famousplagiarists.com says, “In 1965 Biden plagiarized while writing a paper as a student at the Syracuse University Law School in a legal methods course which he failed because of that copied paper…” It went on to say, “Biden initially denied any wrongdoing, claiming that this was just an inadvertent lack of acknowledgement. Yet there were other instances of rhetorical borrowing from speeches made by Robert F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. And the fact that Biden had given other speeches using the Kinnock passages without acknowledgment suggested that the lifting was more than just an inadvertent oversight.” 

An article in Time magazine article by Walter Shapiro summed it up nicely when he said that “In the end, Biden may be remembered as the candidate who truly offered the voters an echo and not a choice.”  

Now that Biden is running as number two, I don’t think the public will care too much what he says or who said it before he pilfered it. He was merely chosen in an attempt to balance the ticket and perhaps unify the party. Obama is running on vague and wispy platitudes like “Change”, “Hope”, and the idiotic notion that he can tax the nation into prosperity. Biden, on the other hand, is there partly to placate the old-time Democrats that subscribe to the old-time party line of tax and spend—those who long for a return to the Clinton administration. And too, his 35 years in the Senate adds a measure of foreign policy experience lacking in Obama’s scant résumé.  

For all the mystery and hoopla concerning the build up to Obama’s VP announcement, Biden comes as a bit of a let down. I was expecting someone more regal to befit Obama’s self-image.