Why did Obama choose Biden?

I’ll have to wait ‘til DalePetrie replies to know what I think ;)

Barack Obama needed someone with extensive foreign policy experience who was well respected abroad. That’s Joe Biden, pure and simply.

I agree with the above, but also have to respectfully disagree with you on the debates. At the time (and this had nothing to do with Palin being his opponent), I thought Biden performed better in the debates than Obama. In fact, I was thinking, “Boy, he would have made a great Presidential candidate…” and quickly realized that since he wasn’t “anointed” like Obama or Hillary, that he never stood a chance. He impressed me then, and now.

I, too, liked Biden in the debate. I wished I could have switched the two around and voted for Biden/Obama. He showed great restraint (if he’d have handed Palin’s arse to her on a platter, he’d be “sexist”). Yet he spoke eloquently and made good points.

I also like that Obama (who is kinda “new” picked a veteran with experience to help be his guide. It helps to know what something is before you ‘change’ it, and you get further with a map than by just striking out into new territory.

Here’s some more information on Biden’s voting record. I can’t say as I agree with all of it, but I don’t think I’d entirely agree with anyone.

Well, at the very least, he’s approximately a trillion times better than the previous VP.

Historically, a good running mate has represented everything the top of the ticket was missing. Look at the Dems in the 1960 election for example: Kennedy was young, inexperienced, not very widely respected, and virtually unknown in the South (and those who knew him didn’t like him). His choice for a running mate? Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, who had been in Congress for decades, was respected across the country and around the world, and was considered a leader of the South.
The same principles apply to the selection of Biden. Obama was young, not yet respected across the board, lacking foreign policy experience, and didn’t yet have the support of the “old school” Dems. Biden had been in the Senate since Obama was eleven years old, had gained the respect of Democrats and Republicans and Ron Pauls across the country, was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee and thus had contacts all over the world, and had great relationships with the big Dems of the Congress and DNC (himself being one of them).

Historically, a good running mate is someone who will get you elected. I found it refreshing that Obama picked someone who he felt was the right choice for the nation and not just the ticket.

I think Biden was an inspired pick. He has tons of experience, especially in foreign policy, and he’s well respected by his peers on both sides of the aisle. I thought he did very well in the debates, and I might have considered voting for him for President, but it was clear from the start that he didn’t have a chance.

I think the Obama/Biden combination is an excellent one. Each has something important that the other doesn’t have.

Maybe a momentary lapse of reason! He may be a good man but he looks weasely!

@augustlan – I hate to disappoint, but I don’t have much to add other than what has already been said multiple times. I guess all I can really add is perspective from how I saw it. First off, I will point out that the second I heard Obama’s speech at the ‘04 convention, I wanted him to run for President some day, I just never thought it would be 2008. I won’t dwell on all the reasons why one speech convinced me he was a good choice to lead the nation, suffice it to say he was saying things that seemed to come from a place of common sense rather than political expediency, and I’d never seen a Presidential candidate in my lifetime who did that…it was honesty, but it was more than that…it was an ideology of people, not government first, and even then it seemed to transcend the type of partisan politics with which we were living at the time.

So, when it was said as early as November of 06 that he was considering running, I was hopeful that he would, and I was looking forward to his candidacy, though I susupected he’d have a much harder time defeating Clinton (whom I expected would run in 2008 as far back as 1999…though I thought it would be after 2 terms of Gore, not Bush). Anyway, when he started to run, I became very much vocal about my support of his candidacy, and I met the resisitance I expected to meet among conservatives, among establishment liberals who thought Clinton was the way of the future, among folks who were as liberal as I who thought Edwards was more viable, among folks who wanted a more radical break and were for Kucinch, and among the Ron Paul revolutionaries (who far too often were caught up in hysteria and didn’t really think the whole thing through all that well…these people were generally the easiest to persuade that Obama was a better choice). Anyway, I got the resistance from the normal places and had a great dea of debate, and won many people over, but the hardest cookie to crack, and I don’t think I ever did, was someone who described himself as to the left of Karl Marx, which I personally could identify with.

This person was convinced Biden was the guy, but once Biden left the scene, then this guy who was probably in his 60s and had NEVER voted Republican, just would not be moved, and said he was for McCain. The reason he gave was the national security…he liked Biden because of his decades of foreign policy experience, but feared that in a world beseiged by terror, and in a country involved in 2 wars, we could not afford someone as inexperienced as Obama. McCain had the experience he felt was most important and even though every single other thing he stood for would have kept going in the wrong direction under McCain, that one issue was of the utmost importance.

I had encountered that attitude before. I spoke with someone in advance of the 2004 election who was supposed to have been in the WTC on 9/11 and he had moved pretty far right simply because of national security….call it the Dennis Miller syndrome…he felt that we needed to kick some ass to deter people from messing with us again. And the debate about Obama being too inexperienced to cope with the pressing foreign policy issues of the day was starting to get some legs. It didn’t seem like the Republicans had siezed as fully on this issue as they could have…instead they were focusing on ridiculous crap like the Paris Hilton comparisons.

At the time, though I had really not passion for Biden, I thought there was clearly a reason (mostly his lack of charisma) he has run for President and lost more than once…I knew perhaps what Republicans didn’t seem to…that there was a large contingent of voters who were more ideologically liberal, but who were simply too terrified by the national security and foreign policy issues of the day to vote for Obama, no matter how much they miht like or agree with him. The Republicans had really chose to attack Obama’s ‘otherness’, which was a losing strategy, because the only people really genuinely afraid of Obama’s ‘otherness’ were the people who in my view dould never have voted for Obama ANYWAY, just because of his ideology.

Now in choosing a VP candidate, there are two lines of thought…one is you should choose someone who does no harm. Biden, with 36 years of experience certainly did no harm. He was a family man…no scandal attached to him, he had survived the rigors of multiple Presidential candidacies with only one real controversy (the whole plaigiarism accusation which was really overblown and small potatoes). And he had the one thing that was key to many, many people, and which was just overlooked in favor of stupid things by McCain. Which is the other key to picking a successful VP candidate…someone who balances the ticket. Obama has sooo many strengths, but his biggest weaknesses were foreign policy experience and overall years of experience. Biden had this…ti balanced the ticket nicely, but also in the do no harm end of things, one thing that many Democrats with good bona fides would have done that might have been somewhat harmful is to bring a real sense of establishment to the ticket. That is, Obama had the skills, and he had good quality experience, but he was not yet ruined by the stink that attaches itself to a career politician. And Biden, someone who never even lived in DC, had also avoided that unlike other real insiders (like Clinton who was in tight with the old school Democratic party).

The way I saw it anyone he could have picked short of Richardson (who in retrospect would not have been a good choice) besides Biden would have done more harm and would not have done as much to balance the ticket in areas it needed to be balanced. All the things people are saying now about Biden just not being all that exciting, and maybe a little offputting…those things did not matter then. Basically, Biden was the candidate I hoped for. Though I have to admit that it didn’t work for everyone. Remember that guy I mentioned…the one who wasn’t going to vote for Obama because Biden was the only Democrat with the foreign policy chops? I thoght for SURE when Obama picked Biden this would change the guy’s mind. But he said, “let me see who McCain picks”. Then he picked Palin who arguably made the ticket FAR LESS safe in terms of foreign policy…but even then he was not moved. He had been conditioned to hate Obama becacus of howhow people ha flocked to him. I think in this case maybe this guy was so “anti-establishment” that he just inherently distrustedObama because of his popularity.

What Dale said. :)

I think the concept of balance the ticket/do no harm was exemplified this time around. Biden balanced the democratic ticket in both ways…any other candidate you can name for the Democrats either would not have balanced the ticket or if they had, would have done some harm. Clinton was a great example. she would have balanced the ticket, but part of Obama’s appeal was broad enough to connect even with some moderate Republicans. And moderate Republicans would have never voted for a ticket with a Clinton on it, that could have swung the election. There were other females who could have been good picks, and from the standpoint of a black and a woman being “too much” change for some people, I tend to think that this time around, for the people who wanted change, there was almost no such thing as “too much”. Socially progressive people of all ideologies would have been fine with this. But there were PUMAs who were marginalized when Clinton endorsed Obama, but they would have mounted a write in campaign for Hillary if any other woman had been on the ticket. Edwards might not have had enough experience and youth needed to be balanced with age in this case. No one quite had the experience of Biden and everyone else had something to detract from some group of people which could have switched over given the wrong choice.

Conversely, McCain’s process was a study in what NOT to do. McCain figured out that Palin brought some balance. She balanced his age, she was a balance for social progress (a woman VP), and she gave him teh conservative bona fides he THOUGHT he needed. But she did harm with the moderates. McCain had been walking a tightrope…he wanted to be the “maverick” who could get moderates to cross party lines, but he also wanted to connect with his far right wing religious conservative base, and he was doing neither all that successfully. But I think McCain made the mistake of believing that he was still regarded as a maverick among moderates. He thought of himself as a maverick, an he sold that message well to conservatives, but the moderates were far more impressed by Obama, who was literally far more of a maverick than McCain. McCain thought he needed to work harder to connect with conservatives, lest they stay home on election day, but with an Obama/Biden ticket, that just never would have happened. Now, what connecting with the conservatives DID do was to lend some much needed energy and excitement to the ticket, but it was kind oa like a sugar rush…exciting at first, but no nutritional value. And at the end of the day, even though she was billed as someone who solidified the maverick bona fides, really she was regarded by the moderates as even less of a maverick than was McCain. Their mistake was believing their own empty rhetoric about being Mavericks. What they did was to embrace conservatism, but tried to repackage it as moderation, and in a typical election cycle, that might ahve worked, but Obama was too…genuine…it just didn’t hold up to scrutiny.

What McCain lacked besides youth was not conservatism dressed in a mavericky package (that was what he was…so treally the balance Palin brought was artificial at best when you held it under a microscope), but genuine maverickiness. What he really needed to do was to find some way to get the moderates to know that he wasn’t just going to listen to the far right the way the Bush administration had done. And when you think about who was bandied about, no one really met that requirement. Perhaps the closest was Tim Pawlenty…he’s moderate enough to have been elected governor of Minnesota twice…a state which has not voted for a Republican Presidential candidate since Nixon. But he didn’t quite meet the “do no harm” standard, because he has governed Minnesota with a strict anti-tax ideology, even at the expense of keeping our citizens safe (remember the I-35 bridge…which would have haunted the campaign).

McCain wanted Lieberman, because Lieberman really would have been a balance on the left/right continuum, but he would have done harm. Lieberman was perhaps the ONLY candidate who would have kept conservatives away from the polls. All those ultra conservatives who Palin energized would have turned out no matter whom he picked, except of course for Lieberman.

I believe McCain only had one option if he wanted to win….Huckabee. Huckaby may have been socially conservative in a way that would not have appealed to liberals, but McCain was never going to get the liberal vote. Huckabee however was someone who moderates seemed to like…he had charisma, and even though he was anti-abortion and gay-marriage, pretty much a pre-requisite for a Republican candidate, he was more liberal when it came to socio-economic justice issues. he was an anti-poverty Republican…and THAT was the big thing that moved moderates away from the Republicans and towards the Democrats this election cycle. It was the classic Wall Street vs. Main Street argument…the Republicans, McCain included had forgotten about Main Street. Huckabee was the only Republican who did not. And if the election of Bush showed us anything it was that even moderates will vote for a socailly conservative Republican, if they feel hi has their bests financial interests at heart (remember “compassionate conservatism”...yeah, right). Huckabee was legitimately a compassionate conservative, and though he never would have gotten headway with people like myself, I think he would have kept a LOT of moderates and moderate Republicans from voting for Obama.

So, regardless of what Biden doesn’t have, he DOES have what a VP candidate needed, whereas Palin did not.

@dalepetrie
You make me laugh. In a good way.

“I hate to disappoint, but I don’t have much to add other than what has already been said multiple times.”

Followed by thirteen paragraphs across two posts… ;)

This is exactly what I was curious about – thanks y’all.

I guess I mean, not much more than personal perspective…all that is after all just my opinion based on my personal observations. In terms of an answer, it boils down to “foreign policy experience”, which had been said previously.