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How far this team has come in four years. Obama's hope-and-change campaign of 2008 was a symphony, not a PowerPoint, and its motto--"Yes we can!"--was more a yearning than a thought. When Biden joined the ticket, he was the seasoned statesman, the venerable Washington hand who reassured swing voters that it was safe to trust the new guy and follow their hearts. Accepting the vice-presidential nomination in Denver, Biden leveraged his long tenure in the U.S. Senate to put the dagger of Brutus between the Republican nominee's shoulders. "John McCain is my friend. We've known each other for three decades. We've traveled the world together," he said. On issue after issue, however, "John McCain was wrong. Barack Obama was right."
This time, in working-class neighborhoods and along rural byways--the pie-and-football country where Biden does his thing--the question is whether Obama feels people's fear and pain. Does he really believe that "the private sector is doing fine" and that Americans, jobless and in debt, stand most in need of larger-storage batteries, faster trains and a 4.6% hike in the top marginal tax rate?
Enter Biden, a heart on the sleeve of the Administration, the plucky boy from scrappy Scranton, Pa., the running back who always heeded his dad's advice to bounce back up whenever he got knocked down. Biden knows what folks are going through. Just ask him. "Half the time, my nose was in that grass. You know what I mean?" he says at yet another high-school-practice drop-by.
Does he go too far sometimes? Did his ma call him Joey? Of course he goes too far. Along with the familiar Washington mix of neediness and overconfidence, Biden's brain is wired for more than the usual amount of goofiness. Picture the Vice President of the United States telling a bunch of schoolboys, "When you're playing for the state title, you've got to invite me! Don't pretend you don't know me." Or feigning delight when a woman at a diner threatens to invite him to visit the Walmart where she works. "I'm like a poor relative. I show up if I'm invited," he warns. A woman at a firehouse tells him they share a distant relative, and--surprise!--"If I got the choice of being related to one of you," Biden answers, well, she would be "the one I would pick."
And by going too far, sometimes he becomes reckless, as he did when he promised at one unscheduled stop, "I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security. I flat guarantee you." Evidently he had forgotten that his boss offered significant changes to Social Security last year in hopes of getting Republicans to strike a deal on spending and taxes. The heart doesn't trifle with consistency.
There is an old saw in politics about learning to fake sincerity, but Biden has been overdoing it for so long that you have to conclude he's for real. After all, he has been running for federal office since Paul Ryan was in diapers.