Monday, August 25, 2008

Biden his time

Barack Obama has done it. The dream ticket of Hillabarack was always going to be just what it looked like: a dream. John Edwards was a good whitening of the ticket for Obama, but he would not do much to make up for Obama's lack of experience.

Choosing the six-term US senator Joe Biden will not only bolster the experience factor, it is the wisest choice because Joe Biden had the right idea about Iraq from the beginning. He always supported the idea of Iraq eventually becoming three countries belonging to the Kurds, Sunnis and the Shiites. He had this idea of Iraq when a huge part of the intelligentsia was focusing on nation-building. He saw through the "unity" of the Iraqis and understood that it was the dictatorship of Saddam that kept a country filled with people of different ethnicities together.


By selecting Joe Biden, Obama has not only shown courage in not picking a veep from the people closest to him on the Democratic primaries; he has also shown remarkable foresight and understood that Iraq would be the defining problem for the next prez and handling it successfully or even competently would make him a hero. For that, he needed to choose the best foreign policy person he could find...now let's see...could it be Bosnian sniper fire survivor Hillary or ambulance chasing ethanol supporting Iowa pandering John Edwards? There was some talk that Obama might look towards Gen. Wesley Clark to match the military experience of McCain, but this seems to be a wiser decision.


The general election seems to be like an India Bangladesh cricket match. One team clearly has the better players and on paper it should be a slam dunk. Yet, there is this apprehension that every Indian cricket fan knows all too well. Here too, the issues are on Obama's side. He has made excellent contributions to the Energy policy Act of 2005, he co-introduced the Coburn-Obama transparency Act in 2006, and has an actual health plan which, though not covering every person (contrast Hillary and Edwards) seems easier to implement. In this field, he far outstrips McCain. McCain on the other hand was a survivor of the "Keating Five", another card Obama should be playing.


McCain realized pretty quickly that he needed to distance himself from W to even be in the running. He did, however, say that the US needs to be in Iraq for the next hundred years, and he seems like he is going to use his military career to say that he is the best person to defend the country.

Obama needs to be careful here. The public here is like a girlfriend on the verge of tears. One wrong word, one wrong tone of voice, or even a careless expression can push it over the edge. He has counter the military goodwill of his opponent with care. He needs to give him his due for being the pow in Vietnam while highlighting that a military career, distinguished though it may be, does not equip one with the goods necessary to be elected to the highest office in the land.

He needs to point out that McCain is weak on real issues like global warming, the war, the economy and the gas tax holiday that he proposed for the summer was truly for the birds.

Obama has been biding his time taking the high road against all of Hillary's barbs and now McCain's. It is time for him to start some serious mud-slinging and because there are a lot of brain-washed voters too dumb to vote for their own interest and fooled to voting for or against non-issues like prayer in schools.

Paul Krugman wrote an excellent column in the gray lady where he touched upon various items on the Obama agenda which should get him the oval office. From the gas prices to real estate to Biden and such like. He concludes brilliantly by saying, "
All it (the Obama campaign) has to do is tarnish Mr. McCain’s image enough so that voters see this as a race between a Democrat and a Republican. And that’s a race the Democrat will easily win."
Sounds easy enough huh...lets see.

3 comments:

avalok ishwar said...

biden' his time - sounds familiar .. i like your analysis on the iraq front. i hadn't thought of that, but biden brings considerable thought and history on that so essentially obama can concentrate on other messes to clean up while biden cleans up iraq. that's a true "deputy" or "vice- president".
your next column is probabaly going to be about the tina-fey-lookalike that mcSame has picked. should that column be titled, "Palin' in comparison.."

tanvi said...

once more ... i am amazed by your writing ......... keep posting more!

rambuna said...

'CHANGE' factor finally prevailed, yeah?