In Senator Joe Biden, Barack Obama may have found exactly what he’s looking for in a vice presidential candidate. He’s experienced, he’s a seasoned foreign affairs expert, and by some accounts, he’s at the top of Obama’s short list going into the Democratic National Convention this weekend.

 

It’s not just the Delaware Senator’s impressive résumé that has party insiders crossing their fingers for an Obama/Biden ticket.

 

What Democrats should really be excited about is that Joe Biden just might be the most relatable man in Washington. Voters can watch politicians on television without ever really knowing them. John Kerry was branded an elitist for what some perceived as his extreme inability to form a direct connection with his audience. Even Barack Obama, for all of his mass appeal, remains someone of an enigma. To the average American, Obama is as much an idea as he is a man. At the very least, the Obama that most Americans know is the distinguished statesman behind the podium, the inspiring orator at the pulpit.

 

But with Biden (to use a tired, but entirely apropos expression), what you see is what you get. He balances Obama’s lofty, energizing rhetoric with a kind of no-nonsense, everyday American idiomatic style in the same way that allowed George W. Bush to form a bond with Republicans and Independents from coast to coast. The difference is that Biden accomplishes this without ever descending to the level of pandering: in the privacy of his own home, the Yale-educated Bush’s dialogue may or may not include some of the idioms he favors in public (i.e., “hunt ‘em down,” and “smoke ‘em out”). When Biden stands before a group of firefighters and offers to buy them all a round of beers to express his gratitude for the firefighters who saved the lives of his two young boys when they were nearly killed in an auto accident, there’s something decidedly more genuine to his tone.

 

During the interminable period of Democratic debates in the run-up to the Iowa Caucus, Biden was the sole source of direct, common-sense answers to debate moderators and reporters. In the first CNN forum, Biden was asked whether- given his history of verbal gaffes- he could be trusted to represent the US in a dignified manner on the world stage. The notoriously long-winded Biden smiled and answered, “Yes,” leaving Anderson Cooper silent as he waited for an elaboration that wasn’t coming. Later, he spurred laughter when he said, “The irony is, Rudy Giuliani [is] probably the most unqualified man to seek the presidency since George W. Bush…I mean think about it! Rudy Giuliani! There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence- a noun, a verb, and 9/11. There’s nothing else. And I mean this sincerely: he’s genuinely not qualified to be president.”

 

Biden’s personable nature aside, he’s displayed the essence of leadership Obama will need to claim a mandate in the November elections. Back in the Fall of 2006, Capital Hill was long on criticism of the Iraq War, but short on realistic solutions. Biden bucked the trend. Along with Les Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations, Biden wrote a partitioning plan that would have provided a political solution to the regional chaos in the area, drawing praise from everyone from Bill Richardson to Bill O’Reilly. And while other Democrats scrambled to claim as much microphone time for themselves in the debates, Biden took what was given to him, and knocked every question out of the park. Even Rush Limbaugh was resigned to admit that Biden was “the only adult” on the stage.

 

Where Obama has become, in recent weeks, a lightening rod for partisan attacks and criticisms, Joe Biden has the potential to add a uniting element that Democratic presidential campaigns lacked in both 2000 and 2004. His common-sense reasoning has the very real potential to appeal to Americans who are looking for common sense answers to the very real challenges confronting them today from steadily rising food prices to skyrocketing rates of foreclosure and unemployment. Add to that his respected record of distinguished service in foreign affairs, and Biden looks more and more like a golden choice for Obama.

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