No ordinary Joe but can Biden deliver Obama the undecideds?

Updated on 23 August 2008

By Felicity Spector

By naming Joe Biden as running mate, Barack Obama has recruited the ultimate insider, says Felicity Spector.

There are 10 reasons a candidate picks his running mate according to CNN's Bill Schneider: "Number one - will he help me win? And the other nine don't matter."

So will Joe Biden, a man who has spent more than half his life on Capitol Hill, provide the necessary ballast to Obama's audacity of hope?

Here are the points in his favour.

First, his background: solidly clue-collar, Catholic, middle aged, he hits all those key constituencies which Obama so crucially needs. He's especially popular among older voters. Rasmussen gave him the highest score of any Democrat among the over 65s.

And seniors aren't just a fifth of the electorate, but as Nat Silver points out they make up some 30 per cent of voters who have yet to make up their minds.

Unlike most presidential contenders he's a highly modest kind of guy. Ranking 99th out of 100 senators in terms of personal wealth, he takes home only his $165,200 Senate salary and some $20,000 more for teaching.

He doesn't even have a second home in Washington - a useful contrast with John 'too many homes to remember them all' McCain - commuting back home to Wilmington every night.

But clearly it is Biden's unparalleled foreign policy experience that's given him the edge.

Thirty five years in Congress, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a trusted voice on world affairs.

He's got a strong record of bi-partisanship - authoring a joint bill with Senator Lugar which could have derailed the rush to war in Iraq. His own son, Delaware's Attorney General Beau Biden, is to be deployed in Iraq as part of the National Guard, sometime before October. And on this, as other issues, he's never been afraid to speak his mind.

Here's his account of a private meeting with former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, back in 1993, a year into the Bosnian war. "Milosevic could tell I had just about had it with his lies and at one point... he said, without any emotion: 'What do you think of me?' 'I think you're a damn war criminal, and you should be tried as one'."

And his forthrightness has earned him a reputation as a tough debater.

During last year's unsuccessful primary run, he laid into Republican hopeful and former New York mayor Rudi Giuliani, when others were pussyfooting around: "Rudi Giuliani! I mean, think about it! Rudi Giuliani. There's only three things he mentions in a sentence - a noun, a verb, and 9/11. There's nothing else!"

Of course his mouth's got him into trouble in the past. Who can forget the debacle of his 1988 presidential bid when he was forced to drop out for plagiarising part of an iconic election broadcast by the former Labour leader Neil Kinnock.

And his 2008 bid had its low moments too, not least when he was twice upbraided for off the cuff remarks which were, at the very least, highly racially insensitive.

He called his then rival Barack Obama "articulate and... clean and a nice-looking guy", and, another time, suggest: 'You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent."

Regular readers of this blog will have heard about that kind of thing before and it's just the kind of thing the GOP are already jumping on.

Add to that a statement from August 2007 that Obama was not ready to serve and some seemingly contradictory positions on funding for the Iraq war.

Here's the first response from McCain spokesman Ben Porrit: "There has been no harsher critic of Barack Obama's lack of experience than Joe Biden.

"Biden has denounced Barack Obama's poor foreign policy judgment and has strongly argued in his own words what Americans are quickly realising - that Barack Obama is not ready to be President."

But despite the screw-up over letting supporters know first by text message - the news, somewhat predictably, leaked out to the media first - the initial reaction from supporters and pundits seem fairly positive.

Opinions so far - safe, but fairly bold - a kind of 'Gore-Lieberman' ticket redux.

Plus he rates highly with activists, emerging as the clear favourite among Democrats days ago.

And as the campaign grows ever more negative Joe Biden can be the attack dog which Obama just can't afford to be.

So back to those 10 reasons for picking a running mate. Will he win round the millions of undecided white, blue collar voters? And will he help to bring those disaffected Hillary supporters back on the team?

The Obama-Biden ticket pairs the ultimate insider with the man who's promised radical change for America.

Can they do it? All eyes on Springfield, Illinois, tonight, to find out.

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