Obama’s Pick Adds Foreign Expertise to Ticket
WASHINGTON — Senator Barack Obama introduced Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. as his running mate on Saturday at a boisterous rally in Springfield, Ill., a choice that strengthens the Democratic ticket’s credentials on foreign policy and provides Mr. Obama a combative partner as he heads into the fight with Senator John McCain.
In Mr. Biden, Mr. Obama selected a six-term senator from Delaware best known for his expertise on foreign affairs — Mr. Biden spent last weekend in Georgia as that nation engaged in a tense confrontation with Russia — but also for his skills at political combat. Mr. Obama passed over other candidates who might have brought him a state or reinforced the message of change that has been central to his candidacy.
At the rally outside the Old State Capitol where Mr. Obama announced his candidacy 19 months ago, he described Mr. Biden as a man ready to be president. And he offered a passionate and politically instructive introduction of Mr. Biden: the portrait of a running mate who filled in what many Democrats have described as the political shortcomings of Mr. Obama.
He presented Mr. Biden as the product of a Catholic, blue-collar home in Pennsylvania who had endured personal tragedy in the death of his wife and daughter and his own brush with death, a man who could relate to the culture of the Senate or of working-class voters.
“I can tell you that Joe Biden gets it,” said Mr. Obama, of Illinois. “He’s that unique public servant who is at home in a bar in Cedar Rapids and the corridors of the Capitol; in the V.F.W. hall in Concord, and at the center of an international crisis.
“That’s because he is still that scrappy kid from Scranton who beat the odds — the dedicated family man and committed Catholic who knows every conductor on that Amtrak train to Wilmington.”
The choice of Mr. Biden was perhaps the most critical decision Mr. Obama has made as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee. It suggested a concern by Mr. Obama’s advisers that his recent overseas trip might not have done enough to address persistent voter concerns about his level of experience, especially on national security.
Mr. Obama announced his selection when the conflict between Russia and Georgia has provided Republicans an
opportunity to reinject foreign policy into an election that has increasingly focused on the economy, and as Mr. McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, has been proving himself a scrappier opponent than many Democrats had assumed he would be.
And Mr. Obama woke up to a reminder of his opponent’s aggressiveness. The McCain campaign released a television advertisement on Saturday morning — even before the rally began — using Mr. Biden’s own words discrediting Mr. Obama during their primary battles, showing Mr. Biden saying that Mr. Obama is “not ready” to be president.
In their appearance in Springfield, Mr. Biden, after trotting onto stage on a warm and brilliant day, offered a caustic preview of what he would be doing in the next 10 weeks. He offered a lusty attack on Mr. McCain — after noting that Mr. McCain “is genuinely a friend of mine; I’ve known John for 35 years” — that left little doubt of the role he would play at a time when many Democrats have worried that Mr. Obama is too restrained a campaigner.
At the same time, he argued, in what aides said was part of an effort to push back against Mr. McCain’s use of his past criticism of Mr. Obama in this campaign, that he had seen Mr. Obama grow in the crucible of a presidential campaign in which “you’re tested and challenged every single day.”
“And during those 18 months, I must tell you, frankly,” Mr. Biden said, “I have been disappointed in my friend John McCain, who gave in to the right wing of his party and gave in to the Swift boat politics he once so deplored.”
In a sign to Mr. McCain that friendship only goes so deep in politics, Mr. Biden went so far as to mock the Arizona senator for owning at least seven houses, as he talked about the kitchen-table conversations struggling Americans were having today. “That’s not a worry John McCain has to worry about,” he said. “It’s a pretty hard experience: He’ll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at.”
Mr. Obama announced his choice of Mr. Biden in text and e-mail messages that began streaming out of his Chicago headquarters at 3 a.m., hours after news of his decision began leaking out. “Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee,” read the text message. “Watch the first Obama-Biden rally live at 3pm ET on www.BarackObama.com. Spread the word!”
At the end of the process, Mr. Obama was working off a list of four contenders. Besides Mr. Biden, the list included Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas. It did not, by every account, include Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, despite an early signal by her supporters that she was very interested in the position, and the belief by many Democrats that she would prove a major electoral asset to Mr. Obama.
Mrs. Clinton issued a statement on Saturday praising the choice and calling Mr. Biden “an exceptionally strong, experienced leader and devoted public servant.”
However, it is hardly clear that her supporters — many of whom have made no secret of their distress at being spurned — will be as outwardly enthusiastic. One of the main tasks for Mr. Obama’s campaign over the next few days, as Democrats meet in Denver for their convention, is trying to avoid a public display of tensions between the two camps and to ensure that her supporters rally around him in the fall.
The announcement, typical for the Obama campaign, was elaborately choreographed, taking place where Abraham Lincoln once served. The two men exchanged hugs and embraces during the event, but they also made amusing slips.
As he wrapped up his peroration, Mr. Obama turned and said, “So let me introduce to you, the next president — the next vice president of the United States of America — Joe Biden.” Mr. Biden offered a new and presumably welcome twist on the frequently mangled name of the presumptive Democratic nominee, as he paid tribute to the “next president of the United States, Barack America!”
Mr. Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is familiar with foreign leaders and diplomats around the world. Although he initially voted to authorize the war in Iraq — Mr. Obama opposed it from the start — Mr. Biden became a persistent critic of President Bush’s policies in Iraq. Mr. Obama’s acquaintance with Mr. Biden is in no small part a result of the fact that the two serve together on that committee, aides said.
Mr. Biden, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination himself this year before pulling out after performing poorly in the first contest, in Iowa, has shown himself to be a tough political brawler, a characteristic that many Democrats say Mr. Obama has not displayed against Mr. McCain. That is something that presidential candidates typically look for in a running mate.
Mr. Biden seems likely to fill in other gaps in Mr. Obama’s political appeal that became increasingly clear during the
primary season and going into the fall. He is a Roman Catholic, as Mr. Obama noted twice in his introduction, and could appeal to a group with which Mr. Obama had trouble during the Democratic primaries. He has a blue-collar background, potentially giving him appeal among working-class voters, another bloc in which Mr. Obama ran poorly in the primaries. And he was born in Pennsylvania, a battleground state that could be vital to both parties.
At 65, Mr. Biden adds a few years and gray hair to a ticket that otherwise might seem a bit young (Mr. Obama is 47). He is, as Mr. Obama’s advisers were quick to assert, someone prepared to take over as president.
He is also something of a fixture in Washington, and he would bring to the campaign — and the White House — a familiarity with the way the city and Congress work that Mr. Obama cannot match after his relatively short stint in the Senate. Sensitive to portrayals of Mr. Biden as a creature of Washington who undercuts Mr. Obama’s claims to represent change, aides to Mr. Obama emphasized that Mr. Biden commutes home by train each evening to Wilmington, Del., where he has continued to live throughout his Senate career.
By the time the announcement was made, it was anything but a surprise, and Republicans were ready, armed with what Democrats assumed was a mountain of material mined from Mr. Biden’s 36 years in the Senate and his presidential campaign.
By dawn, the McCain campaign had produced the television advertisement, replayed regularly on news programs, that reprised critical statements Mr. Biden made about Mr. Obama during the campaign. “I think he can be ready, but right now, I don’t believe he is,” Mr. Biden said in August 2007. “The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.”
For good measure, it included a quotation from Mr. Biden talking about Mr. McCain on “The Daily Show” in 2005: “I would be honored to run with or against John McCain, because I think the country would be better off.”
The selection was disclosed as Mr. Obama moves into a critical part of his campaign, preparing for the party’s four-day convention. From Springfield, Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden went their different ways. Mr. Obama is going to begin a tour of swing states that will bring him into Denver on Wednesday, while Mr. Biden is to head straight to Denver, where, aides said, he will spend time meeting Obama delegates, paying particular attention to helping soothe any tensions with Mrs. Clinton’s supporters there.
Mr. Biden is hardly an entirely safe choice. He was forced to apologize to Mr. Obama almost the moment he entered the race for president after he was quoted as describing him as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” a remark that drew criticism for being racially insensitive. While campaigning in New Hampshire, Mr. Biden said that “you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”
Republicans made clear that they intended to keep a close eye on Mr. Biden, looking to exploit any more moments like those.
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JEFF ZELENY
In Mr. Biden, Mr. Obama selected a six-term senator from Delaware best known for his expertise on foreign affairs — Mr. Biden spent last weekend in Georgia as that nation engaged in a tense confrontation with Russia — but also for his skills at political combat. Mr. Obama passed over other candidates who might have brought him a state or reinforced the message of change that has been central to his candidacy.
At the rally outside the Old State Capitol where Mr. Obama announced his candidacy 19 months ago, he described Mr. Biden as a man ready to be president. And he offered a passionate and politically instructive introduction of Mr. Biden: the portrait of a running mate who filled in what many Democrats have described as the political shortcomings of Mr. Obama.
He presented Mr. Biden as the product of a Catholic, blue-collar home in Pennsylvania who had endured personal tragedy in the death of his wife and daughter and his own brush with death, a man who could relate to the culture of the Senate or of working-class voters.
“I can tell you that Joe Biden gets it,” said Mr. Obama, of Illinois. “He’s that unique public servant who is at home in a bar in Cedar Rapids and the corridors of the Capitol; in the V.F.W. hall in Concord, and at the center of an international crisis.
“That’s because he is still that scrappy kid from Scranton who beat the odds — the dedicated family man and committed Catholic who knows every conductor on that Amtrak train to Wilmington.”
The choice of Mr. Biden was perhaps the most critical decision Mr. Obama has made as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee. It suggested a concern by Mr. Obama’s advisers that his recent overseas trip might not have done enough to address persistent voter concerns about his level of experience, especially on national security.
Mr. Obama announced his selection when the conflict between Russia and Georgia has provided Republicans an
opportunity to reinject foreign policy into an election that has increasingly focused on the economy, and as Mr. McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, has been proving himself a scrappier opponent than many Democrats had assumed he would be.
And Mr. Obama woke up to a reminder of his opponent’s aggressiveness. The McCain campaign released a television advertisement on Saturday morning — even before the rally began — using Mr. Biden’s own words discrediting Mr. Obama during their primary battles, showing Mr. Biden saying that Mr. Obama is “not ready” to be president.
In their appearance in Springfield, Mr. Biden, after trotting onto stage on a warm and brilliant day, offered a caustic preview of what he would be doing in the next 10 weeks. He offered a lusty attack on Mr. McCain — after noting that Mr. McCain “is genuinely a friend of mine; I’ve known John for 35 years” — that left little doubt of the role he would play at a time when many Democrats have worried that Mr. Obama is too restrained a campaigner.
At the same time, he argued, in what aides said was part of an effort to push back against Mr. McCain’s use of his past criticism of Mr. Obama in this campaign, that he had seen Mr. Obama grow in the crucible of a presidential campaign in which “you’re tested and challenged every single day.”
“And during those 18 months, I must tell you, frankly,” Mr. Biden said, “I have been disappointed in my friend John McCain, who gave in to the right wing of his party and gave in to the Swift boat politics he once so deplored.”
In a sign to Mr. McCain that friendship only goes so deep in politics, Mr. Biden went so far as to mock the Arizona senator for owning at least seven houses, as he talked about the kitchen-table conversations struggling Americans were having today. “That’s not a worry John McCain has to worry about,” he said. “It’s a pretty hard experience: He’ll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at.”
Mr. Obama announced his choice of Mr. Biden in text and e-mail messages that began streaming out of his Chicago headquarters at 3 a.m., hours after news of his decision began leaking out. “Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee,” read the text message. “Watch the first Obama-Biden rally live at 3pm ET on www.BarackObama.com. Spread the word!”
At the end of the process, Mr. Obama was working off a list of four contenders. Besides Mr. Biden, the list included Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas. It did not, by every account, include Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, despite an early signal by her supporters that she was very interested in the position, and the belief by many Democrats that she would prove a major electoral asset to Mr. Obama.
Mrs. Clinton issued a statement on Saturday praising the choice and calling Mr. Biden “an exceptionally strong, experienced leader and devoted public servant.”
However, it is hardly clear that her supporters — many of whom have made no secret of their distress at being spurned — will be as outwardly enthusiastic. One of the main tasks for Mr. Obama’s campaign over the next few days, as Democrats meet in Denver for their convention, is trying to avoid a public display of tensions between the two camps and to ensure that her supporters rally around him in the fall.
The announcement, typical for the Obama campaign, was elaborately choreographed, taking place where Abraham Lincoln once served. The two men exchanged hugs and embraces during the event, but they also made amusing slips.
As he wrapped up his peroration, Mr. Obama turned and said, “So let me introduce to you, the next president — the next vice president of the United States of America — Joe Biden.” Mr. Biden offered a new and presumably welcome twist on the frequently mangled name of the presumptive Democratic nominee, as he paid tribute to the “next president of the United States, Barack America!”
Mr. Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is familiar with foreign leaders and diplomats around the world. Although he initially voted to authorize the war in Iraq — Mr. Obama opposed it from the start — Mr. Biden became a persistent critic of President Bush’s policies in Iraq. Mr. Obama’s acquaintance with Mr. Biden is in no small part a result of the fact that the two serve together on that committee, aides said.
Mr. Biden, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination himself this year before pulling out after performing poorly in the first contest, in Iowa, has shown himself to be a tough political brawler, a characteristic that many Democrats say Mr. Obama has not displayed against Mr. McCain. That is something that presidential candidates typically look for in a running mate.
Mr. Biden seems likely to fill in other gaps in Mr. Obama’s political appeal that became increasingly clear during the
primary season and going into the fall. He is a Roman Catholic, as Mr. Obama noted twice in his introduction, and could appeal to a group with which Mr. Obama had trouble during the Democratic primaries. He has a blue-collar background, potentially giving him appeal among working-class voters, another bloc in which Mr. Obama ran poorly in the primaries. And he was born in Pennsylvania, a battleground state that could be vital to both parties.
At 65, Mr. Biden adds a few years and gray hair to a ticket that otherwise might seem a bit young (Mr. Obama is 47). He is, as Mr. Obama’s advisers were quick to assert, someone prepared to take over as president.
He is also something of a fixture in Washington, and he would bring to the campaign — and the White House — a familiarity with the way the city and Congress work that Mr. Obama cannot match after his relatively short stint in the Senate. Sensitive to portrayals of Mr. Biden as a creature of Washington who undercuts Mr. Obama’s claims to represent change, aides to Mr. Obama emphasized that Mr. Biden commutes home by train each evening to Wilmington, Del., where he has continued to live throughout his Senate career.
By the time the announcement was made, it was anything but a surprise, and Republicans were ready, armed with what Democrats assumed was a mountain of material mined from Mr. Biden’s 36 years in the Senate and his presidential campaign.
By dawn, the McCain campaign had produced the television advertisement, replayed regularly on news programs, that reprised critical statements Mr. Biden made about Mr. Obama during the campaign. “I think he can be ready, but right now, I don’t believe he is,” Mr. Biden said in August 2007. “The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.”
For good measure, it included a quotation from Mr. Biden talking about Mr. McCain on “The Daily Show” in 2005: “I would be honored to run with or against John McCain, because I think the country would be better off.”
The selection was disclosed as Mr. Obama moves into a critical part of his campaign, preparing for the party’s four-day convention. From Springfield, Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden went their different ways. Mr. Obama is going to begin a tour of swing states that will bring him into Denver on Wednesday, while Mr. Biden is to head straight to Denver, where, aides said, he will spend time meeting Obama delegates, paying particular attention to helping soothe any tensions with Mrs. Clinton’s supporters there.
Mr. Biden is hardly an entirely safe choice. He was forced to apologize to Mr. Obama almost the moment he entered the race for president after he was quoted as describing him as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” a remark that drew criticism for being racially insensitive. While campaigning in New Hampshire, Mr. Biden said that “you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”
Republicans made clear that they intended to keep a close eye on Mr. Biden, looking to exploit any more moments like those.
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JEFF ZELENY
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