HALLI CASSER-JAYNE - bio
RED, WHITE 'N TRUE™
BIDEN CAN SAVE OBAMA, BUT CAN OBAMA SAVE HIMSELF?
Posted, August 23, 2008,  12:01 p.m

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The pundits will wax eloquent for the next few days and most will praise Obama for making the right pick for his running mate. The love-fest with Joe Biden will be as sweet as a lick of cotton candy. But at the end of the day, the story is Barack Obama’s. And whether or not he gets elected president rests solely on Barack Obama’s shoulders because Biden can save Obama, but can Obama save himself?

There’s a lot to be learned from Obama’s choice of Biden for his vice-president. There’s the obvious that Obama has zilch experience in foreign policy and not even a grand world tour can correct that deficit. The fact left the Obama Campaign with little wiggle room on selecting his vice president. Out of the pool of candidates the Obama Camp was vetting, Joe Biden was the obvious choice to help diffuse the reticence of the public’s support due to Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience.

Of course, by picking Biden, Obama has admitted that he is, despite his bravura, aware he is short on foreign policy experience, an admission that might make him look weak to some.

In turning to Joe Biden some of that weakness might be diffused. Joe does contribute his pluses. Despite his thirty-five years in government and his impressive rise in the Democratic Party Joe Biden never forgot his working-class roots. He comes across as a regular Joe, a warm and affable guy, quite the contrast to Barack Obama who has the entitled written on his brow, and maybe the word elitist as well.

Biden hails from blue-collar Scranton, Pennsylvania, a state that the Democrats must win if they are to take back the White House. Other than the ghettos of Philadelphia and the elite suburbs of Philly and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is not inherently Obama country. Pennsylvania is Clinton country. You can bet Obama will be using Biden heavily in the state which showed little affection for Barack Obama.

Biden is a Catholic; a demographic Obama has been having trouble with, so there Biden is a good pick for Obama.

And unlike Obama, Biden is dimensional. His biography reads like a tragedy found on the pages of a romance novel. His wealthy father lost his fortune and plunged his family into poverty. But the will of a strong mother helped make Biden the man that he is today. So did the tragic loss of his young wife and daughter the victims of a drunk driver, which left Biden with two sons to parent after he saw them through their own long and agonizing recovery from the accident. Biden remarried five years later and has a new family now. But one can only imagine suffering such heartache.

Biden had his own health scare when he suffered a brain aneurism, but he’s survived that and two stabs at the presidency, both failed, one because of a plagiarism scandal, and one because of Barack Obama who during the course of the primaries managed to seduce the press, which helped him seduce the voters who might have taken a closer look at Biden under different circumstances.

But that was yesterday and this is today. Now, as the campaign moves to center stage the Obama landscape has changed. Obama is statistically tied with his opponent John McCain when all believed the election would be a landslide for the Democrats in protest to the failed presidency of George W. Bush. It seems the voters have taken their blinders off their eyes and perhaps become tired of the hype that catapulted Obama to presumptive nominee. They appear hungry to find something real they can latch onto in the Barack Obama candidacy.

Obama’s whole persona and therefore candidacy has been built on the meme that Obama is a new candidate who can bring much needed change to our government.  But since being awarded presumptive nominee by the party Obama’s campaign and his ideology has fallen into the category of ordinary. At this point, the inspiring Obama appears to have been nothing more than a public relations feat.

In this context Joe Biden seems a limp choice although a safe one and eerily reminiscent of George W. Bush’s choice for his vice president, Dick Cheney, also chosen to bolster a vacuous resume.  This begs the question why it is that out of a country of $300 million American can’t come up with a candidate who has it all and doesn’t need to be shored up by another?

One can’t help thinking what today would have been if Hillary Clinton had been named Obama’s vice presidential pick. So many were holding onto the dream that Obama would be man enough to let bygones be bygones and Bill Clinton be, well, Bill Clinton, and name Hillary his running mate.

Many were disappointed yesterday to learn that despite Obama’s insistence that “Hillary would be on anyone’s shortlist for vice president,” that clearly Obama doesn’t see himself as just anyone, because Hillary wasn’t on his short list, or any list of Obama’s as she had never even been considered for the job.

This is no small revelation. In fact, it punctuates the problem of who Barack Obama is: a man more concerned with his own destiny than that of the country, a petty man who holds onto grudges even in the face of poll numbers that say you are not getting women, the core constituency of the Democratic Party behind your candidacy and that’s why your poll numbers are static.

Obama is a man/boy, not quite ready for primetime. Joe Biden, a seasoned politician, might be able to help the candidate. But if Obama wants to win the presidency he’s still left with the task of helping himself find the man within who can defeat a childish stubbornness, which has kept him from winning the hearts and minds of so many women.

In the end, therefore, it is only Barack Obama who can save himself and the hopes of the Democratic Party. Even so, Joe Biden was, of course, on Anyone's short list.