As Scott writes, the V.P. buzz is certainly swirling around Joe Biden today -- so I've been thinking back to the days I spent on the trail with Biden the week before the Iowa caucus. Biden was a candidate obsessed with "experience" as a credential for the presidency, and his most ardent supporters were highly skeptical and dismissive of Obama, whom they viewed as green. Unsurprisingly, Biden talked primarily about foreign policy on the trail, from his Iraq withdrawal plan to an old confrontation with Slobodan Milosevic, whom Biden called "a damned war criminal" to his face.
Biden also touted his leadership on the Violence Against Women Act, but couldn't resist insulting feminist groups in the process -- accusing them of ignoring the issue. "They were more concerned about the choice and gender issues," he would say. "While others talked, I got it done." In fact, the legislation was partly drafted by the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, now known as Legal Momentum.
In short, there's not much evidence from Biden's abbreviated 2008 run that he would strengthen Obama's hand on the economy, this year's defining issue. But the most charming thing about candidate Biden was that he traveled with an entourage of 20 bubbly Irish Catholic relatives, including his 90-year-old mother, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden, and his baby grandson Hunter.
Biden's sister was his national campaign chair. The Bidens are an accessible (cough, white) American family with a heart-wrenching tale of tragedy -- Biden's first wife and infant daughter were killed in a car crash shortly after he was elected to the Senate in 1972. As a single dad, Biden commuted by train to D.C. and made sure to be back in Delaware each night with his two surviving sons. Biden remarried in 1977. He and wife Jill Tracy Jacobs, a professor, have one daughter. As one Biden supporter told me in Iowa, "They're going to be the next Kennedy family!"
Lastly, Biden is genuinely funny. That never hurts, and does a lot to make up for his history of gaffes.
--Dana Goldstein
