obama picks biden

Lots of good analysis this morning of why Barack Obama went with Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate, but this from the intrepid Andrew Tanenbaum might be the most dead-on:

Every serious observer of the Senate, on both sides of the aisle, readily admits that few, if any, senators know as much about foreign policy as Biden. He shores up a critical weakness in Obama's CV--lack of foreign affairs experience. When McCain attacks Obama for lack of experience, Biden is going to say: "John, Barack and I are a team and I've been in the Senate 14 years longer than you and I'm chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, a job you've never held." This alone is worth the price of admission. It makes it hard for the Republicans to attack the Democrats on foreign policy when the Democratic ticket has more experience than the Republican ticket (short of McCain picking Colin Powell as Veep).

For me, the real interesting test will be how the young Obamamaniacs respond to the choice. As much as I love The Colbert Report, the gold standard of hip political comedy, the show's constant jokes about McCain's age have gotten (forgive the pun) old. Biden is only six years younger than McCain, and one of his chief electoral appeals is, put bluntly, he's not hip and he's not cool. He's a grownup in the eyes of people who worry that Obama (and some of his younger, impetuous supporters) aren't.