It's hard for me to imagine why Obama would choose serial loser Joe Biden to share his stage, but until today I never really had any reason to suspect that Biden would actually endanger the ticket. Thanks to Harper's Magazine I now do have such a reason. Joe Biden is involved with lobbyist Stephen Payne and his attempts to solicit pay-to-play "gifts" for the Bush Presidential Library.
In July the Times of London stung lobbyist Stephen Payne with an undercover investigation. In the video made by the reporter, Payne offers to arrange meetings between Askar Akayev, former president of Kyrgyzstan, and Bush administration officials including Rice and Cheney. Payne suggests that $750,000 might be enough to elicit public statements of praise from the administration.
Look at what Payne also suggests about Biden, as printed in this month's Harper's:
I think the main thing is that [Akayev] comes, and he's well received, that he meets with high level people in the administration and most importantly we send positive statements made back from the administration about 'This guy wasn't such a bad guy', 'Many people have done worse', those kind of statements from a couple of people in the administration, maybe Senator Biden, maybe on the Democrat side, a few statements like that...
Now you know how much respect the Republicans have for Biden. They certainly don't think he's a threat to them. No, indeed, they think Joe Biden is a witless dupe who can be relied upon to make nice statements about deposed central Asian rulers at the behest of Dick Cheney.
But wait, that's not all. Biden's former director of legislative affairs, Brian Ettinger, was Payne's long-time partner in the lobbying business. So not only is Joe Biden thought by Republicans to be a weak-minded sop, he's also closely connected to the center of a Bush-Cheney lobbying/bribery scandal.
I ask you, is this the kind of guy that Obama should invite into his campaign? Wouldn't we rather have a VP candidate, like Wesley Clark, who strikes fear into the hearts of Republicans everywhere? Obviously all the talk about Biden as VP is pure speculation at this point, but I urge speculators to look more closely at the man they are promoting.