Given Biden's experience, working the foreign policy arena seems like an obvious choice. Hillary has that portfolio, so there is no room for him there. That's not a bad thing. With her focused overseas, Biden has a golden opportunity to have a dramatic and historic domestic impact.
He understands the experience of average Americans as well as anyone. We are talking about one of the least affluent members of the Senate, famous for riding public transportation back and forth from his home district every day. His kids work for a living. His wife works for a living. He knows what tragedy can do to a family. He knows what it's like to be a kid and have Daddy tell you, "We gotta move sport." He knows what it's like to be a single parent. He knows what it's like to bury a child.
You don't get that education at Harvard. You get it at The School of Hard Knocks. Right now, a lot of people have been forced to enroll in that school and they are terrified. For millions of Americans looking into an uncertain and scary future, Joe's the guy who can look them in the eye and say, "I've been there too, and you are not alone." Obama can talk about hope, but you need someone like Joe to deliver it into people's hearts.
Don't get me wrong. Obama is an inspirational political leader unlike any we've seen since Bobby Kennedy. But even with all the power of his office, he cannot escape its constraints. He can take off his tie, roll up his sleeves and sit in a barbershop with ordinary folks, but he will never be "one of us"... I don't care if the barbershop is in Kenosha, Wisconsin or Brooklyn, New York.
He's an exceptional guy. He's always going to be The Coolest Guy In The Room. There's a reason people called him a "rock star" long before he was a household name. Just watching him dance with Michelle was enough to reduce a bevy of internationally acclaimed hip hop divas to tears. If he could sing, he'd give Marvin Gaye a run for his money. That's not a bad thing on the big screen. That's a great thing when you have to project your vision to billions of people. But that much starpower burns too bright to credibly bring the measure of light people need as they stare at the kitchen table and face the darkness enveloping them.
Biden is fortunately unburdened by that. Maybe it's because he's not cool. He's never going to be cool. Maybe it's because he has a history of saying stuff that just comes out wrong. The silver lining there, artifice is not high on Biden's list of skill sets. Maybe it's because no one is looking to him to save the world. There's no way he could ever deliver the joke Obama did at the Al Smith dinner about his father being Jor-El (For those who missed the Golden Age of comics, that would make the speaker... Superman.) But that's ok. Millions of Americans are in the same boat as Biden. He could walk into a barbershop, sit down in the chair and carry on a conversation with folks in a way that is totally credible. Not just there in the room, but even projected out into the news stream.
You can take a lot of digs at Joe for his comments on and off camera. But you can't spin lack of pretense into "dishonoring the office" like people tried when an old colleague of his addressed him as "Mr. Vice President" at Union Station and he dismissed the honorific with "Give me a %$#!! break." The real story of the day? Biden was announcing $1.3 Billion in stim money for AMTRAK. When it comes to distorting Biden's message, that is the best they can do. Focus on a trivial, offhand remark and ignore the Billion dollars in the background.
That's a game that can be played as long as Biden's performances are few and far between. Take a half-dozen of those and string them together into a B reel and you have Dan Quayle with a larger vocabulary. But you can't play that game if Biden is out there daily....and highly visible... in the most unlikeliest of settings.
70 years have passed and what is Eleanor Roosevelt's most enduring image? Pictures of her visiting miners in Appalachia. She certainly did a heck of a lot more than that. How many of you knew she was instrumental in the drafting and adoption of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights? How many of you knew Roosevelt served as the first chairperson of the UN Human Rights Commission? How many of you knew she was a "premature anti-Fascist"? Those were all incredibly important things, but the most enduring images of her come from the work she did in Kentucky and West Virginia. The UN can have its crises. Human Rights can come in and out of favor. But nothing that ever happens in the history of the world will ever tarnish the image of Eleanor helping honest, hardworking, Americans find a measure of dignity.
We spend a lot of time looking at the Big Picture. But the Big Picture is really a mosaic of tiny pieces. Someone who can operate at that level and bring it all into focus is critical right now or the Big Picture will become a blur and eventually lose all meaning. This is the role Joe is uniquely qualified to fill.
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Hey Joe,
You say "Work is more than
A paycheck."
You know it's about dignity.
The stimulus package
Can't give people dignity.
But you can.
This is your chance
To do what you do everyday
And change the world.
Visit the tent cities.
Give them some dignity
And Hope.
What do you say, Sport?
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