23 August 2008

Biden

Obama's choice of Joe Biden to share his ticket in the November elections is, for me, a good piece of news. Biden has extensive experience: thirty-five years as Delaware senator, and chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. If he is elected to the vice-presidency, surely North American international policy can be built around an unprecedented capacity for analysis of a wide range of issues.

I say this not only in terms of the quantity of Biden's experience, but also in terms of its quality. I have read that Biden himself (initially a candidate in the Democratic primary) suggested that Rudolph Giuliani's sentences invariably contain "subject, verb and... '9/11'". Biden, in effect, situates himself according to some very different coordinates, those of a complex and interdependent world with conflicts of a changing nature, where not everything can solved with a battering ram.

Over the next few weeks we'll probably see an attempt to air dirty laundry, which always happens. With his long experience, Biden will be vulnerable to attack. But above all, Obama's choice offers a new example of his courage: he did not choose to recruit some figure who would ensure him success in one of the swing states like Pennsylvania or Florida. Instead, he chose to believe in
the senator of the tiny state of Delaware. Rather than calculating how he could capture the support of different minorities or social segments, he gives priority to a high level of discourse with a global dimension, one in which everybody who wishes to be can be recognized.