NBC: Obama chooses Biden as running mate
 

Foreign Relations Committee chairman has globe-trotting credentials

WASHINGTON - Delaware Senator Joe Biden is Barack Obama's choice to be his vice presidential running mate, NBC News has confirmed.

Biden, who has served in the Senate since being elected at the age of 29, is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and will add his foreign policy expertise to the Democratic ticket.

In recent years, he has traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan two times and to Iraq eight times. He returned Monday from a fact-finding trip to Georgia.

The McCain camp was quick to react. "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 realizing - that Barack Obama is not ready to be president," McCain spokesman Ben Porritt said early Saturday morning.

At age 65, the Delaware senator is nearly 20 years older than Obama.

He has endured tragedy and near death: Five weeks after he won his Senate seat in 1972, his wife and infant daughter were killed in a car accident.

And in 1988, he suffered a brain aneurysm and nearly died.

Biden’s voting record is in line with many Senate Democrats: He voted in 2003 to authorize President Bush to use military force in Iraq, and he also voted against the Bush tax cuts and against Republican Supreme Court nominees William Rehnquist, Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

He has run twice for the Democratic presidential nomination, once in 1988 and again this year.

He was forced to exit the 1988 race after he was caught having borrowed portions of a speech by British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock — without giving him credit.

In 1987, as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden managed the Senate’s rejection of Bork, a conservative Supreme Court nominee by Ronald Reagan.

But some Democrats still blame Biden for allowing Thomas to win confirmation to the high court in 1991.


Reputation for verbosity
Biden has a reputation for verbosity. He often prefaces his questions to witnesses before his committee with remarks such as, “All kidding aside…” or “I don’t mean to be cute, but...”

He got less than glowing reviews in 2006 for his questioning of Alito during his confirmation hearings.

At one point Biden rambled on about Alito’s alma mater, Princeton.

“I really didn't like Princeton,” Biden told Alito. “I was an Irish Catholic kid who thought it had not changed…I admit, one of my real dilemmas is I have two kids who went to Ivy League schools. I'm not sure my Grandfather Finnegan will ever forgive me for allowing that to happen. But all kidding aside, I wasn't a big Princeton fan.”

The Delaware Democrat’s long-windedness occasionally leads him to make remarks that prove to be embarrassing.


In 2007, he seemed to be talking down to Obama by calling him “clean” and “articulate.”

In 2006 he said, “In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking.”

Intensely personal campaigner
Biden is an effusive, wisecracking, and often intensely personal campaigner. No Democratic politician is more literally "in your face" with voters.

At a campaign breakfast in Iowa in 2007, he claimed credit for getting money appropriated to build a new type of armored vehicle that reduced casualties from roadside explosives in Iraq by 70 percent.

Walking into the audience, Biden got six inches away from one woman’s face.

Biting off his words, Biden vehemently told her, “I will not cut one single solitary cent of the money that we need to build those vehicles to protect these kids — and they cost billions of dollars.”

During his bid for the nomination last year, Biden criticized Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton.

“Both Hillary and Barack didn’t get it right,” Biden said, when they had their “little spat” on whether a president could order a unilateral attack on terrorists in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

Biden said Obama “didn’t know it was already U.S. policy” but “was attempting understandably to show more strength” on military matters.

And he criticized Obama and former Sen. John Edwards for “playing the populism card, the idea that rich are bad, poor are good, the nobility of America lies in the poor. I think that’s a losing general election argument; I think it’s a losing argument, period.”

He argued, “The rich are as patriotic as the poor, if you ask of them.”

Biden also parted company from Obama in a May 2007 vote on cutting off funds for operations in Iraq.

“I knew what the political vote was — it was to vote ‘no,’” Biden explained a few months later. “I had bets with my staff that every one of the senators who were running (for president) would vote against it, even though they knew better. I went ahead and voted for the funding.”

Presidential contenders Obama, Clinton and Sen. Chris Dodd were among the 14 senators who voted no on funding.

Biden has not always taken the predictable liberal Democratic line: He surprised some of his fellow Democrats in 1975 when he advocated a measure to ban the use of busing to school integration. He argued that busing was counter-productive.


Biden has begun a political dynasty in Delaware: his son Beau was elected state attorney general in 2006.

Biden commutes to the nation’s capitol everyday from Wilmington on Amtrak.


NBC News' Kelly O'Donnell and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26010055/?GT1=43001

Here's what makes this so lame. The "change" candidate picks Biden, who voted yes on the Iraq War resolution. Obama could have picked Hillary, who had the same IWR vote and she would have unified the party. I don't see what Biden brings to the table in terms of votes, as he is from Delaware. He is just an insurance policy for Obama in that if anything happens to Obama, Biden is the older white guy who assumes the role of president. We had an opportunity for a truly diverse ticket but end up with two men - again. I believe the report that Hillary was not even vetted. Huge mistake. This party is like the gang that couldn't shoot straight. :distress:

I think he is a better choice than her. Of course I would have preferred Dennis Kucinich but we know where that would have gotten us..It seems the disgruntled Hillary supporters may cost us the election ..Hell hath no fury.....

Amen on all counts here Chris!:xoxo: Obama just tore his britches in a huge way! Way to go goofball.. LMAO:laugh:

Biden's just a total fossil. I mean i seriously dont get it.:shrug:

He needed someone older and more experienced to counterbalance the even bigger fossil on the top of the Repub ticket.

I think Evan Bayh would have been a much better choice personally.

Now that I can agree with.

Generally I avoid politics on music boards, but I was awakened by my cell phone text message. SO: I personally like Biden -- he was my favorite of the dems running for prez nomination. However, this choice bothers me. To me, and I might be proved wrong, it suggests that Obama has Al-Gore-itis. He doesn't seem to have the eye of the tiger. He should have chosen Hillary -- as a grand gesture, as a sign of toughness ("I can handle the Clintons"), as a way to attract her constinuency, as a way to electrify attention. In other words, Hillary guarantees a win. Biden doesn't budge the numbers (dude got like 1% of votes in Iowa). After all this hype -- the thing Obama is skilled at -- it's a. . . letdown. What will his presidency be like? IF he wins. (My money is on McCain.) That's my initial response.

Amen -- and exactly how many millions of voters does JB hold sway on :rolleyes:

Yes, but I think Hillary would've been the best. Not gonna lie, I am hugely disapointed in this. I think he really made a crap choice and f*cked up his chances.:distress:

Biden? What a shmuck. What is it with these career politicians? Why don't they go get actual jobs at some point, or retire?

The lure of power & position is too great. . . .

Hey, good for Biden! It's what Bertrand Russell called the "fallacy of the superior virtue of the oppressed." I didn't know Biden had it in him (logic, that is).

Some are, some aren't -- as is true of any faction. And let's all stop yabbing about patriotism for a couple of months or so. Like good breeding, it's tired & phony-baloney when it's proclaimed publicly at every turn & used as a wedge issue.

I agree. What Obama missed (because the media didn't direct him!) was that those who voted for Hillary want an indication from him that he hears them (the reasons for which I'm not gonna get into here). Choosing Hillary would have provided that signal. That's probably why he's given her such slack with the convention. But I don't think that will be enough (let's see how that catharsis works). 2012 probably starts Tuesday.

Yep. I'm still voting for this ticket but there are plenty of other Hillary supporters that aren't. They are referring to themselves as PUMA (Party Unity My Ass). Then there are the folks in Michigan and Florida who feel they were disenfranchised by that primary debacle. Howard Dean did a good job with the House and Senate races in '06 but he needs to be run out of the party if he thinks this is a good ticket. I'd walk down the street and tell him so but I just passed a bunch of cops in full riot gear at Speer and Zuni. And the Secret Service is parked down the street again. :o :laugh: