Yo McCain, Don’t Fear The Joe.

Posted by: Jason | August 24th, 2008 · 12:47 PM

If there’s one guy I listen to on matters dealing with John McCain it’s Bill Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor and now NY Times columnist who has always courted an inside ear with the Arizona senator.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday this morning, Kristol made a statement which scared me a little in regard to the future prospects of McCain’s running mate selection. Taking note of the experienced Joe Biden, Kristol suggested that McCain camp may be worried about “putting someone with no foreign policy experience on the ticket”, in reference to the debate they’ll have.

At the risk of this advice backfiring, and, God forbid, allowing McCain to think he’d be best served by making the awful selection of either Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty, I’m going to give the advice anyway. Don’t fear the Joe!

First I’d ask, have bad matchups at Vice Presidential debates ever mattered? Consider the extreme to that situation, in 2004’s Vice Presidential debate between Dick Cheney, someone with decades of experience like Biden (even more so in fact), and Senator John Edwards, hardly a 4-year Washington senator who’s experience dealt with legal issues mainly. Can we seriously look back on Kerry’s loss and attribute it to Edwards poor performance against Cheney? I don’t think so at least.

Second, there’s a political angle that can be exploited against Biden if say… an outside governor were debating him. Assuming this governor could hold his or her own on domestic matters, with the right coaching, one could make the case that they could attack Joe Biden on countless bad decisions he’s made, from his opposition to the Gulf War, to his then support of the Iraq War, from his being against many of the Reagan military buildups against the Soviet Union, to his most recent boneheaded plan to divide Iraq up into 3 subdivisions by ethnicity. On all of these major decisions, Joe Biden wasn’t just wrong, he showed zero vision on what actually happened in the future. I’m confident your average smart governor could handle this part of the debate if coached correctly.

Third, if McCain were to pick the “correct” governor to debate Joe Biden, there are personality and psychological angles which could be exploited as well. Consider this… If you’ve ever seen Joe Biden debate someone on television, you end your experience with thinking he was incredibly smart, but incredibly pompous. In fact, you’d call Biden a downright jerk sometimes. What if Joe Biden were seen as being loud and abrasive to… say… Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

I believe, and many I’ve spoken with about this agree, that Biden’s potential behavior could not only get him in trouble with women, but with men alike who would be pressed to believe they’d want to protect Palin from the “evil abusive male type”. If you don’t believe this is true, go back and watch the press coverage after the Clinton/Lazio debates of 2000. Lazio, having walked over to Clinton on stage in demands of her signing a pledge, committed political suicide the minute he raised his voice to her. Call it unfair, but it’s a reality.

Of course, if there were ever a reason not to fear the type of experience Joe Biden has to offer, it’s in who was successful in the primaries themselves after countless debates, for I don’t recall Biden ever winning a state election. And doesn’t the nomination of Barack Obama, despite the comparison to the Bidens and Clintons of the world, prove enough that McCain can send in a lesser experienced surrogate?

John McCain should pick who he wants, not who Joe Biden dictates. Biden can be dealt with in intelligent ways, if done prepared. But we’ll be worse off if McCain believes this a time to abandon his momentum in the conservative ranks, by selecting someone like Tom Ridge or Mitt Romney out of fear.

Add us: Digg | Del.icio.us | Technorati

Your comment:

You must be logged in to post a comment.