Biden His Time

No flash, but some substance – and an ability to fight
 

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
8/23/08
http://www.mytown.ca/zepp
 

I haven’t been too impressed by all the hoopla over who the candidates pick as their running mates. While the media will fulminate endlessly over What It All Means, and say that Obama picked Biden for his experience, or his gravitas, or because John McCain already had a date, the reckonings will matter for little.

I greeted the news that Joe Biden had gotten the nod with a jaw-splitting yawn. Biden was the safe choice, and in many ways the most obvious choice. I would have liked to have seen someone more leftist on the ticket, someone more activist in nature, say a John Edwards or a Bill Richardson, but Biden does have a lot of Washington experience, especially in foreign policy, and he can fight like a badger when he needs to.

Tickets get in trouble when they pick VP candidates who are interesting. Nixon won despite Spiro Agnew, and McGovern lost, in part, because of the medical history of the unfortunate Eagleton. The presence of Lieberman on the ticket probably drove 100,000 or so voters to Ralph Nader.

It’s the (comparatively) low key policy wonks in the number two slot who do the most good. Reagan probably wouldn’t have won in 1980 without George Bush, and Gore was central to the overall success of the Clinton administrations.

Even in a losing cause, a solid, feisty running mate can be memorable. Lloyd Bentsen will be remembered for his debate with the hapless Dan Quayle for many years after anyone is able to recall a single line from any of Walter Mondale’s speeches.

There was a cartoon strip that ran in papers a few days before the Kennedy assassination. The gist of it was that nobody knows who the Vice President is, and when told, the foil character slaps his head laughing and says, “Oh, THAT’S right!” The role of the vice president had been to stay the hell out of the way, keep a very low profile (except during campaigns) and wait for the President to die. The notion of a “balanced ticket” came from the earliest days of party politics, when the runner up at the convention often became the VP candidate in order the keep the two main factions happy. This usually led to more-or-less united political parties led by two men who couldn’t stand one another. In the past 40 years, as primaries became a major vehicle for selecting candidates and conventions changed from party fights to coronations, the notion of a “balanced ticket” came to mean a ticket that could appeal to diverse demographics. If the main candidate was a liberal from the NE, then you got a moderate from the south to “balance” it out. Election results did little to suggest that this actually worked, but it was conventional wisdom, and like much conventional wisdom, impervious to reality.

I’ve never had anyone say to me, “I wasn’t going to vote for that guy, but then he picked so-and-so as his running mate.” A ticket can be hurt by a bad choice, of course, but usually not significantly so. Dan Quayle virtually defined the term “idiot”, and Bush still won in ‘88.

Veeps not only bided in anonymity, they usually were considered expendable. Presidents would swap out the number two man every four years or so–FDR went through three Veeps before deciding on Harry Truman in ‘44. One of the men widely rumored to have been an FDR vice president at one point, John Nance Garner, once famously observed that the job wasn’t worth “a pitcher of warm spit.” Up until then, vice presidents became known only if the president died while in office, or if they shot someone themselves (no, Dick Cheney wasn’t the first vice-president to shoot someone).

The job changed in 1993, when Clinton gave Al Gore oversight over reducing the size of the federal government (something Gore achieved stunning success at) and a fairly active role in preparing administration policy.

In the Putsch junta, of course, it’s completely topsy-turvy. Putsch sits around waiting for the vice president to die so he can take over, and in the meantime, the vice-president, the vile Dick Cheney, sits behind the curtain, pulling levers and running the smoke and light machines. Cheney is one of those type of people who, like Vladimir Putin, evokes a visceral revulsion and dislike in people. If you meet him, you don’t want to shake his hand; you want to throw large rocks at him. Some people wondered vaguely why the GOP wanted a hapless moron like Putsch, and a slimy, reptilian sort with no visible charm like Cheney as their ticket, and the inverted roles, like all the American values and institutions that the GOP has corrupted and inverted, required completely new roles. Putsch was there to provide enough charm to cover for the unelectable Cheney, and persuade enough gullible fools that he was a friendly moderate.

Hopefully, things will change after this election. McCain, should he be elected, will probably be the actual president, and not an embarrassing puppet. And the vice president will probably be relegated to drinking warm spit and waiting for McCain to die.

With Joe Biden, though, there probably is some good news. The ticket is balanced, although with a glorious disregard for the south. Assuming that McCain goes for Romney or some other midwesterner, this might be the first time since about 1952 that the major parties haven’t had a mush-mouf on either ticket. Biden does provide a counter to the claims that Obama lacks foreign policy experience (he has more than McCain and Obama combined) and he’s mature and relatively moderate. What he isn’t is just another damned centrist trying to placate the implacable right. He tends to the middle from personal belief, rather than political cowardice. Nor can Obama be accused of picking Biden in order to pick up electoral votes; Delaware was already a dark blue color on the electoral map. Nor did Obama look for an ideological “balance”; they voted the same way 91% of the time.

I don’t agree with everything in Biden’s senate career. He presided over the Bork and Thomas hearings, which were disasters. He was for the war back in 2002, although has since come to his senses. On the other hand, his stances on such things as Vladimir Putin, abortion, middle eastern policy, and human rights all mark him as one of the good guys.

He’s not an exciting choice, but he’s a solid choice. He may not help the ticket, but he certainly won’t hurt it.