Talk about a gift for Republicans.

It wasn’t too long ago that Biden was calling Obama “clean” and “articulate,” words that many interpreted as being uncouth in reference to a black man.

I haven’t had a chance to read/watch the pundits’ analysis of the decision, so here’s my thoughts.  Obama knew that the Russian invasion of Georgia exposed a glaring weakness, namely his extreme inexperience on matters of foreign policy.  In addition to being a windbag and a gaffe machine Biden is respected for his foreign policy credentials.  So, despite the overall weakness of Biden as a VP choice Obama’s hand was forced.  He simply couldn’t risk proceeding through the general election campaign with another untested individual rounding out his ticket.  Any additional world unrest would have only served as a nail in his electoral coffin.

One pecularity is that Obama went with a fellow senator.  Voters have long tended to cast their ballots in favor of former governors instead of legislators for president since they actually have some executive experience.  I’m sure Obama would have rather chosen someone who had actualy run something (anything!), but he was in the mode of trying to cover one of his many glaring weaknesses and he ultimately had to pick one even it left others untended.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 8:28 pm and is filed under News & Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.