Update: Biden's foreign policy chops.
In our ongoing pursuit of guessing who Obama's veep is going to be, NYT says at least Sen. Joe Biden wants the job. Biden is slated to speak at the democratic convention on the same night Obama's vice president will speak. But so is Sen. Evan Bayh.NYT: Only Mr. Obama and a handful of close and very discreet aides know where the vice-presidential selection process stands with the Democratic National Convention in Denver just a week away. But several people close to the campaign say Mr. Biden, of Delaware, is among those who are under consideration.
Political etiquette requires potential vice-presidential picks to deny any interest in the post and assert how much they love their present job, all the while coyly batting their eyelashes at the nominee to signal their availability.
But Mr. Biden, anything but coy, has left little doubt that he wants the job.
Asked in May whether he would accept the vice-presidential slot, he said, “You’d have to consider it. I mean, how could you just blow it off?”
A month later, he was asked again. He first told Brian Williams of NBC on “Meet the Press,” “I am not interested in the vice presidency.” But with very little prodding, a moment later he said that if Mr. Obama asked him to be his running mate, “Of course I’ll say yes.”
Mr. Biden’s strengths and weaknesses as a vice-presidential nominee are glaringly obvious and in many cases overlap. At age 65, he would bring heft, knowledge and nearly four decades of experience in Washington to a ticket headed by a relative political newcomer. But that experience — he was first elected to the Senate at age 29 and has served for nearly four decades — would undercut Mr. Obama’s image as an agent of change.
