Kevin Drum offers Barack Obama some truly craptacular running mate advice.
I don’t have a brief one way or the other for Biden — though he certainly fits the traditional loudmouth-attack-dog-who-says-things-the-president-can’t-say profile pretty well — but this objection doesn’t seem right. Once he leaves the cozy confines of a primary where the anti-war base is enough to win, Obama is going to enter the chillier territory of a general election where he’ll need to draw a bunch of votes from the ranks of people who once supported the war. He needs a good way to signal these folks that he doesn’t consider them tainted forever by their erstwhile support, and what better way than by choosing a moderately hawkish senator who once favored the war but has since changed his mind? The opposite tack — insisting that he’ll associate only with the pure of heart who opposed the war from the beginning — would be something of a disaster. People won’t vote for a candidate who tacitly seems to be calling them idiots.
This is just a variation on the ‘serious person’ argument. Only people who were for the war can be president or vice-president (in this case) because people don’t like to be reminded that they are effing stupid, or because they don’t trust people that do not use military force first and ask questions later.
Run on your superior judgment in opposing the war and then make your first major decision picking a running mate that voted for the war.
Seriously, Kevin, WTF?
I disagree.
Biden’s vote notwithstanding, he’s been unrelentingly critical and in my view, honest about the war in general. He knows what is happening in the rest of the world, and would be a fantastic attack dog, as Kevin pointed out.
I’ve never understood the blogosphere’s general dislike of Biden. I find him refreshing and smart.
I’m not saying he would be my first choice at all, I’m saying dismissing the idea out of hand is a bit shrill.
it’s his reasoning I find ridiculous, not Biden per se.
However, I’d want him to keep a packet of immodium in his mouth at all times.
Dislike of Biden in the blogosphere probably has many roots. The man is intemperate at times, after all. However, I would wager a lot of it comes from Biden’s championing of the Bankrupcy “Reform” bill that passed a few years back. That law brings us very, very close to a precursor-to-feudalism relationship with regards to credit card banks.
I pay off my credit card every month so I could vote for him in a pinch.
With that kind of “I’m in it for myself” attitude, why don’t you just vote Republican?
he was snarking on the bankruptcy bill.
Sorry, missed the snark. (My excuse is that I didn’t get enough sleep.)
I see that Kevin got his degree in Higher Broderism, where being right is less important than compromising. So, you need to balance the ticket by picking someone with poor judgment to go along with someone with good judgment. Makes sense.
Would Drum’s judgment possibly be skewed by the fact that he originally supported the war himself?
I think it’s called projection.
Definitely.
Obama is going to enter the chillier territory of a general election where he’ll need to draw a bunch of votes from the ranks of people who once supported the war.
Umm…but hasn’t he been endorsed by people in the party who once supported the war? So what’s the problem here?
Oh…right–there is no problem. He’s just pretending that he’s not trying to frame who’d make a “suitable” and “proper” set of veeps from which Obama must select. Of course, the last time a campaign listened to the musings of the columnist clique, we were stuck with Joementum. Not that Biden’s is as bad…I’m just sayin’…maybe the columnist clique isn’t the best wisdom source. But I’d imagine that Obama’s campaign knew that already.
I’d have more respect for him if he’d just say why he was pro-Biden and list the reasons why.
his post needed a meta tag
There is no way in hell Biden should be VP. I haven’t forgotten that he started taking credit for the Leslie Gelb idea of dividing Iraq.
Wasn’t Biden the one behind the disastrous bankruptcy reform bill that’s been one of the things murdering people in the present economic depression? Wouldn’t that automatically disqualify him from the ticket?
Yes, why, yes he was, and yes, why, yes it should.
I really think that Sherrod Brown or Richardson would be the best choices. Biden would be a horrific for just a number of reasons. I really think if Obama is smart he’ll pick somebody to his left for the vice presidency so that it’s quite clear that nothing good will come if something grassy knoll “bad” were to happen to him…You want the shooters to think “Oh great. A hispanic president…” or “Oh great. A pro union anti wto/nafta president…”
Philip Shropshire
http://www.threeriversonline.com
PS: Someone please tell me that Sherrod Brown is pro choice.
I liked Booman’s idea about that guy from Rhode Island.
I’ve made no secret that I don’t mind the idea of Biden as a VP, but that is the worst reasoning…
What it is is a habit of selling out. Well, we’re not really anti-war. I mean, you know, war is still cool and all. You guys’ll still like me, right?
Yech…
but you know, really I mostly don’t mind the idea of Biden as a VP candidate. As I VP, he’s far from ideal.
Well, Biden’s duller than shit. A disaster in the making as a campaigner. What is it with Apparatchik Old Dem Fighting Liberals and their thing for malfunctioning outpatients from the Disney Animatronics Lab? Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, and Biden?
People won’t vote for a candidate who tacitly seems to be calling them idiots.
Raise you two Bushes and a Cheney.
“Serious people”, as the word is used by that self-described group, never saw an unnecessary war.
There are necessary wars, but they almost always begin as unnecessary wars started by someone else. The exceptions are few. I think most reasonable people would say that if a foreign leader starts talking about the necessity of war with your country and begins a massive mobilization of their armed forces, you should definitely mobilize your own and seriously consider whether you should strike first or plan on a defense in depth strategy.
Needless to say, only two countries share a land border with us, and neither of them are credible opponents. Short of the rise of another actively expansionist world power like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, all American wars at present are, therefore, unnecessary.
Really serious people understand this.
“Serious people”, on the other hand, are formulating foreign policy from their personal psychological complexes, often including a need to be seen as “serious people” and a need to impose their will violently upon others. George Bush launched an invasion of Iraq not because of WMD or any other threat to the United States, but because his personal psychological inadequacies required him to. In layman’s terms, he’s mentally ill and a danger to others.
Really serious people keep hoping that the general public will eventually wake up to the realization that much of what has passed for “serious” leadership over bulk of human history is a symptom of serious psychological disorders.
I realize that many of you may think this approach is a non-starter politically, but it is the simple fact of the matter, and politics not based on facts leads to… where we are now.
It would lend such credibility to Obama’s ticket to have the number two slot filled by a guy whose ’88 Presidential campaign ended in disgrace after he was exposed for stealing Neil Kinnoch’s campaign commercials, who disastrously and ineffectively chaired the Judiciary Committee during the Clarence Thomas hearings (where Anita Hill was trashed), who bears major responsibility for the bankruptcy bill and who, as a white guy, could give such a ringing endorsement to the cleanliness and articulateness of the biracial guy at the top of the ticket.
Seriously, now!