Obama picks Biden as his veep

Obama's attack dog?

THROUGH text messaging and e-mails, Democratic presumptive nominee Senator Barack Obama let his millions of supporters know early Saturday morning that former presidential candidate, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, will be his vice presidential running mate. The selection of Joe Biden was widely anticipated and predicted. Biden is considered a "safe" choice, who fills in the foreign affairs and national security voids in Obama's resume. Senator Biden is the chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Although Biden is a safe choice, his selection is not going to enthrall Hillary Clinton supporters, especially women, who believe that in spite of Obama's oft-repeated comment that "Hillary would be on anyone's short list," Obama campaign did not seriously consider or vet Hillary. How negatively they react to Obama's selection of Biden and its ramification for the November election remains to be seen.
The advantage of choosing Biden is that he is respected for his knowledge of foreign affairs and national security, areas in which the McCain campaign has been hitting Obama hard, with success, over the last month. Biden was one of the few US senators to visit and reassure Georgia after the recent Russian invasion.
Although he is the senator from tiny Delaware for the last 35 years, Joe Biden was born in Scranton, in the neighbouring state of Pennsylvania, a battleground state where he is enormously popular. Biden could definitely help Obama win Pennsylvania.
Biden is also popular among the Appalachian poor whites; a group Obama is having difficulty wooing. Biden also has strong links with the labour unions, a crucial group in the Democratic Party.
What tipped the scales in Biden favour is that he is very pro-civil rights and because of that Obama has developed affection for him. One can see genuine rapport between the two.
The vice presidential candidate is the chief attack dog, an area in which the naturally genteel Obama comes up short. Biden will fill in the role of the smiling assassin admirably. One can never forget how Biden destroyed the Republican front runner of last summer, the former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani: "Every Giuliani sentence has a noun, a verb and 9/11!"
Biden is not a perfect package. He tends to go off script and shoot from the hip. He has been labeled "a gaffe machine" by the press. The Obama campaign will try to keep Biden on message; it is not clear how much they will succeed.
The Republicans will go after Biden and remind voters of Biden's plagiarism during his first presidential bid in 1988, when one of his speeches was an exact copy of a speech given by the British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock.
The choice of Joe Biden is an attempt by Barack Obama to reassure the American voters that if they elect him, they will be electing not only a young and "inexperienced" man, but a seasoned and experienced senator only a heartbeat away from the presidency. They will not only be voting for Obama the black man, but also for Biden, the white guy!
The selection of Senator Joe Biden will almost compel Senator McCain to pick former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney as his running mate. Pundits believe that among all the candidates McCain is considering, only Romney can go head-to-head, toe-to-toe in debates with the excellent debater Joe Biden. McCain does not like Romney, but without a conservative like Romney as his vice president, Republican base will remain unenthusiastic. Romney, however, comes with some baggage. He is a Mormon, and like Al Gore's Jewish running mate Joe Lieberman in 2000, some Americans will find Romney's Mormon religion unappealing.
In the final analysis, vice presidential candidates create excitement for a couple of days and then recede into the background. Except for Lyndon Johnson in 1960 (he helped Kennedy win Texas), the vice presidential candidate has had little impact on the result of the presidential election.
Americans vote for the top of the ticket. Obama or McCain will have to win it on their own, not with an assist from their VP.

Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed is a Rhodes Scholar and Daily Star columnist.