Joe Biden is  intelligent, experienced, engaging and handsome (in an east coast kinda way). He’s seeking the democratic nomination for president - sorta.  Biden whose first bid for the presidency dissolved in an alleged plagiarism scandal, since proved phony, seems to be making only a half-hearted effort to achieve the nomination -- and it’s too bad.  Biden just might be the right candidate for the job.

His life story reads like the tragic stories romance writer queen, Nora Roberts, dreams up. His first wife and infant daughter were killed in a car accident shortly after he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972 and he was sworn into office from the bedside of his surviving seriously injured two sons.

While his instinct was to resign after the loss to care for his boys, he was  persuaded to remain in the senate. It was then he began  commuting an hour and a half each day by train from him home in the suburbs of Wilmington, DE, to Washington, D.C., which he continues to do to this day. His sons recovered and are grown now, and he has a daughter with his second wife and five grandchildren.

The hard knocks seem to have done him good. Surely he’s not perfect but as a political figure he offers something that this country needs as a leader in these crazy times. Biden is REAL!

Yeah, REAL and for those of you who have forgotten the way it’s spelled: R-E-A-L. It’s been so long since we had an honest candidate standing in front of us, we hardly recognize the symptoms. You, know, sez what he means and means what he sez . . . calls it like it is . . .REAL!

These days, real is so anathema to American politics that when we see it we don’t know what to do with it. And we don’t seem to want to believe it. No campaign slogans here, no code words, no hype, no “straight talk” just REAL talk.  

Yet it’s as if REAL seems to scare the pants off of Americans. Politicians have been handing Americans lines for so long they’ve come to expect them, want them, NEED them.

America has become a histrionic country, hooked on hyperbole. We’re strung-out on sound-bite-itis. We want fire and brimstone, Elmer Gantry, Harold Hill-ARY. We want legendary, hope-filled, but the last thing we seem to want, and the one thing America needs most, is truth.  

Biden’s career in the Senate has been laudable. He is a long-standing member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and serves as its chairman. He also serves on the Judiciary Committee.

A leading voice against the Bush Administrations’ handling of the Iraq war, he voted to authorize the war but was a major proponent of seeing the inspections through before taking military action against Saddam. He says he is most proud of his having authored the Violence Against Women’s Act. He has worked tirelessly to fight for crime legislation.

What strikes me as ironic in this campaign is the fact that in nearly every debate, Biden’s fellow democratic candidates have repeatedly applauded Joe for his positions, made his word the one that means something, “Joe is right, I agree with Joe, Joe’s absolutely right, Joe is exactly right, I have the deepest respect for my friend, Joe Biden.”

With endorsements like that, who needs Oprah? Or Barack Obama’s promise of change? Or Hillary Clinton’s experience?

With Biden you'd get experience and honesty. Now wouldn’t that be a REAL change?

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