Senator Joe Biden listens to his iPod aboard the Obama campaign plane en route to Washington, D.C., from Greensboro, N.C.
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Biden has a breadth of expertise that comes from having served as chairman of the Judiciary and the Foreign Relations committees in the Senate, two substance-heavy posts. But his ability to maneuver in either of those areas as Veep might quickly run him afoul of both the Attorney General and the Secretary of State. Biden will want a big say in helping decide who in an Obama Administration would get those two posts, if only because he will know how to get Obama's choices confirmed in the Senate better than anyone else. But those close to Biden say the model he would follow would more likely be that of Mondale. As one put it, "Joe Biden is the ultimate got-your-back kind of guy, and whatever that ends up meaning, that is what he'll do for Obama."
It would have been nice to ask that question of Biden himself, but a campaign spokesman told me the Senator was suffering from a cold that made it a strain to give interviews. (I didn't glean evidence of any symptoms during the four speeches that I watched him give over two days.) The spokesman also said Biden would consider it "presumptuous" to talk about how he would perform the job for which he is running. Or maybe it simply wasn't in the script.