In the beginning, many people questioned Joe Biden's value as vice president.
They laughed and joked, calling Biden the gaffe maker. He took it well and, indeed, made a few gaffes. For a while, Joe seemed to be defending his job as a confidant and advice giver.
But Joe has proven to be a worthy veep.
He works behind the scenes with barely any media coverage. He's the good version of Cheney. Instead of moving behind the scenes figuring out how to torture people, Joe does good stuff and goes on important trips. He's been all over the globe and he's been all over the nation announcing stimulus funds, comforting people in his way and schmoozing with the firemen, police officers and union people. Above all, Joe is a good man.
And if Obama chooses Biden's strategy for Afghanistan-Pakistan, it will say a lot about Biden's unrecognized might and the bond between Obama and Biden.
Newsweek says, as other media have said in the past, that Joe is valued less for his advice and more for his ability to stir things up (I'd argue that's Joe's approach to influencing the conversation):
Across the board, Biden's real value to the president is not really his specific advice. It's his ability to stir things up. Senior government officials who have participated in small meetings with the president and vice president have noticed Obama and Biden engaged in a duet. "The president will lean over, and they will quietly talk to each other. Biden will then question someone, make comments, and the president just leans back and seems to be taking it all in before he speaks," Attorney General Eric Holder tells NEWSWEEK. Ron Klain, Biden's chief of staff, describes the interaction like this: "President Obama is one of the world's greatest listeners; you can't tell what he is thinking. He's able to watch the VP ask tough questions and doesn't have to do that himself. [In that way] he doesn't have to reveal what he's thinking. That's very valuable." NewsweekNewsweek leads with this example:
Joe Biden had a question. During a long Sunday meeting with President Obama and top national-security advisers on Sept. 13, the VP interjected, "Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?" Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. "And how much will we spend on Pakistan?" Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. "Well, by my calculations that's a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?" The White House Situation Room fell silent. But the questions had their desired effect: those gathered began putting more thought into Pakistan as the key theater in the region.Newsweek might call that stirring the pot but Biden has been long advocating a Pakistan strategy:
The four part plan he laid out included large, unconditional financial support for non-security projects such as schools, roads, clinics, etc; conditioning of security aid on performance; support for judicial, political, and good government reforms; and finally and increase in public diplomacy and high impact support.Newsweek also notes that Biden is incorrectly labeled a "dove:"
Sen. Biden first correctly linked the current instability to the administration's poor management and near desertion of Afghanistan by early 2002. He downplayed the notion that the rise of terrorism resulted from the absence of a fully functioning liberal democracy in Pakistan, instead arguing that Musharraf saw the U.S. packing up its bags in Afghanistan soon after the invasion (in preparation for Iraq) and responded by hedging against the U.S. departure and cutting other "Faustian bargains." Pakistan had experience being burned by the U.S. in the past. They were left holding the bag and contending with unmanageable militants when the U.S. -- after partnering with Pakistan to foster and back the mujahedeen in the late 80s to counter the Soviet threat -- promptly departed.
A second assessment the senator made concerned the failure of the U.S. to extend engagement to the Pakistani moderate majority. While Musharraf is conveniently being treated as the fall guy who snuffed out democracy in his country, it's important to remember that the U.S. abetted this trend by raising expectations by declaring democracy was on the march and then failing to broaden its engagement in Pakistan and Afghanistan (as they both shared the territory that formed the hotbed of terrorism). This was a result of our policy to deal with al Qaeda on the cheap -- to simply fund the Pakistani military to kill terrorists rather than invest in altering the structures that gave rise to terrorism. A Musharraf policy rather than a Pakistan policy derived from limited U.S. interest and attention span. WN
Biden has been incorrectly characterized as a dove who wants to pull out of Afghanistan. In fact, according to his "Counterterrorism-Plus" paper, he wants to maintain a large troop presence. He also favors a greater emphasis on training Afghan troops—and defending Kabul and Kandahar—than on chasing the Taliban around the countryside, and he wants more diplomatic efforts to try to peel away those Taliban who can be bought with money or other inducements (like political power). He is leery of massive attempts at nation building and more hopeful that the United States can work with local warlords than with the corrupt and inept central government in Kabul. On a grander strategic level, he wants to tilt the administration's efforts more toward Pakistan (to "make the problem PakAf, not AfPak"), reasoning that Al Qaeda—the real threat to the United States—is hiding out not in Afghanistan but in nuclear-armed -Pakistan. Read the whole Newsweek story here
