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Obama’s Vice President: Who Is Joe
Biden, The Running Mate? |
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August 24, 2008 Democratic presidential
candidate Barack Obama is calling his running
mate, Joe Biden, "a leader who is ready to
step in and be president."
Obama and Biden appeared together Saturday at
a huge rally in Springfield, Illinois, their
first joint appearance since Obama tapped
Biden to be the Democrats' vice presidential
candidate.
Freshly printed signs saying "Obama/Biden"
sprouted in front of the Old State Capitol as
thousands gathered for the rally.
Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential
candidate, said that he wanted a running mate
who would be prepared to step in as president,
could help him govern and would challenge him.
In Joe Biden, a 35-year veteran of the Senate,
Obama has chosen a Washington insider with
extensive experience and a reputation for
speaking his own mind.
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, Biden has met many world leaders
and is one of the most influential foreign
policy voices in the US Congress.
An internationalist and strong supporter of
the United Nations, he has been a leading
critic of what he sees as the vague,
unilateralist approach of George Bush, the
incumbent president.
Recently he travelled to the Georgian capital
Tbilisi, at the invitation of Mikheil
Saakashvili, the president, and criticised
Russia's conduct in the conflict over the
breakaway region of South Ossetia.
Iraq critic
In 2002 Biden voted to authorise the US-led
invasion of Iraq, which Obama opposed from the
start, but has become a firm critic of the
war.
Last year he pushed through a resolution
declaring that Bush's so-called troop surge -
which has been hailed as a success - was "not
in the national interest". He also won praise
for a peace plan which would have divided the
country along ethnic lines.
Biden also has a personal interest in the
conflict, his son Beau, Delaware's district
attorney and a national guard reservist, is
due to leave for Iraq at the beginning of
October.
"I don't want him going," he told the crowd at
a state fair crowd in Iowa. "But I don't want
my grandsons or granddaughters going back in
15 years. So how we leave makes a big
difference."
Many see Biden as the ideal candidate for the
traditional role of the vice-presidential
candidate, attacking the other party's man,
given his love of joining the debates on
America's political talk shows.
But his outspoken style has proved a hindrance
on occasions, becoming notorious for his
long-winded answers.
However, in a debate last year, he countered a
question on whether he had the self-discipline
to cut down on his trademark style simply
saying: "Yes".
Senate experience
A lifelong politician, 65-year-old Biden
outdoes even John McCain, Obama's Republican
rival, in terms of Senate experience, having
served five years more than the Arizona
senator.
But their are echoes of Obama's youthful
idealism in his past, he was one of the
youngest politicians ever elected to the
Senate and entered the race for the Democratic
nomination in 1988 promising to "rekindle the
fire of idealism in our society".
He was reluctantly forced to quit that race
three months later after he was caught
plagiarising lines from a speech given by Neil
Kinnock, the then leader of Britain's
opposition Labour party.
His latest bid for the White House was
short-lived, pulling out of the race after
getting less than one per cent in the first
nominating conquest in Iowa.
But it did highlight something which could
become an issue on the campaign trail as
vice-presidential candidate, his propensity
for gaffs.
Biden told the New York Observer newspaper: "I
mean, you got the first mainstream
African-American who is articulate, and bright
and clean and a nice-looking guy."
Some took the remark to remark to be racially
offensive, but Obama said he was not offended
and the matter was dropped.
He was also forced to defend his remark that
"you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin'
Donuts unless you have a slight Indian
accent".
Car accident
Biden has suffered his fair share of
difficulties, both personal and political,
during his 35 years in the Senate. Just weeks
after his election in 1972, his first wife
Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were
killed in a car accident. His sons Beau and
Hunt were badly hurt.
He was sworn in at the hospital bedside of one
of his sons and still refuses to work on
December 18, the day of the accident.
He remarried 15 years later, having a daughter
with his new wife Jill Tracy Jacobs.
The senator himself had a brush with death in
February 1988, when he was hospitalised with
two brain aneurysms. It was seven months
before he could return to the Senate.
Born in 1942, the Roman Catholic son of a
Pennsylvania car salesman, Biden could help
Obama connect with blue-collar Democrats who
the campaign has so far struggled to attract.
He is seen as more down-to-earth than many
Senate colleagues commuting by train from
Delaware to Washington every day rather than
taking a home in the capital. |
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