Bidenmania

Loose thoughts on Biden:

• C-Span today recycled a Biden appearance at the National Press Club, from a few months back when he was still a candidate for the Presidency. I gotta say, I really do not see why he never got traction. His own story--and the way he told it--would seem to be a campaign manager's dream: hard-working middle-class parents; Catholic schools; strong family values; plus a hilarious story I hadn't heard before about his mother and the nuts-and-bolts cufflinks (--preview it here--I wouldn't be suprised if we hear it from the Convention?). And while the McCains are busy tut-tutting Obama as having rejected Hillary because she didn't agree with him--seems to me the charge would be just as true (or truer) about Biden. In the Press Club speech, Biden made it clear that he thought Obama's approach to foreign policy leadership was naive, vulnerable to rookie error. He's dead on there, and I'm delighted that Obama will have so seasoned and savvay a player at his elbow.

• Glen Greenwald has a fascinatingly ambivalent piece up in which he quarrels with Biden's record (mostly a fair cop), yet in the end concedes that Biden was a pretty good pick-- "there were far worse possibilities, and few better ones." Indeed, Greenwald goes so far as to point out that Biden's (pretty tepid) record of opposition to the administration on civil liberties issues is in some ways better than Obama's. But I think what bugs Greenwald most is not Biden's record per se as the warmth with which he is being received by the Washington establishment--David Ignatius (eeuew!), David Brooks (gack!), Fred Hiatt (oh, gag me with a spoon!) --in an update, Andrew Bacevich puts the point even better. It's a worthwhile point, but it confronts us with a conundrum: there is a Washington establishment--a "permanent government," if you will--and no president is going to make it to first base unless he comes to terms with them (a small voice whispers "Jimmy Carter," here, and "Richard Nixon"). Obama is not part of it; Biden (even though he goes home every night) pretty much is. Can Biden help Obama to cope with these guys, without being swallowed up by them? The future, as the editorial writers like to say, lies ahead.

• Monica Langley's Wall Street Journal piece is wonderful inside baseball, but it highlights (implicitly) an important point: Biden really wanted this. He wasn't just waiting around to be Secretary of State. He worked all the angles and cheerfully tramped on the faces of a couple of competitors to get where he is today. Apparently the vice-presidency is not seen as a dead-end job any more.

• For a weird and wonderful West Wing angle, go here.

• Am I more pumped about Biden than I was/am about Obama? Actually, that just might be the case.

Update: Here's another--others have made the point, but Charlie Cook puts it well.