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The vice president-elect is missing!

After three months as President-elect Barack Obama’s high-profile running mate/foreign policy expert/unintentional comic relief, people are starting to notice that Joe Biden is nowhere to be found. Other than appearing at one Obama press conference, the new administration’s second-in-command has been a rare sight.

There is a reason for that.

As the Obama team prepares to take power on January 20th, it has become increasingly clear that Biden will have a much smaller role than the high-profile position he enjoyed as Obama’s smiling wingman during the campaign. 

Expectations are being readjusted. In early November, a U.S. World and News Report story that quoted Obama and Biden associates and advisors said Biden was hoping to be Obama’s “indispensable man.” Last week, Obama senior advisor David Axelrod told The New York Times that Biden will be a “trusted counselor.” There is a world of difference between an indispensable man (think Karl Rove), and trusted counselor (think bartender.) All of which led Washington Post columnist David Ignatius to write, “And then there's the incredible shrinking vice president-elect, Joe Biden. Where is he these days? Do they have him in a box?”

Yes, they do have him in a box. It is a box with four sturdy walls.

The first wall is Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel. Business Week called Emmanuel “brash, bold and abrasive,” which probably puts it kindly. A man like Emmanuel is not going to let anyone come between himself and the president.

The second wall is Axelrod. The man who said Biden will be Obama’s “trusted counselor” already happens to be Obama’s most trusted counselor. Much like Emmanuel, this is not a position Axelrod -- a Chicago political operative -- will cede.

The third and fourth walls are under construction. If they are completed, they will completely box in the vice president-elect’s hopes of having a strong voice on foreign policy. If Hillary Clinton becomes Secretary of State, she will be the face of American foreign policy around the world. The State Department often clashes with its own administration under the best of circumstances. Imagine Vice President Biden trying to set or clarify foreign policy with a mega-personality like Clinton at Foggy Bottom. It would get ugly. The final wall is Robert Gates, who is expected to be named Secretary of Defense. Gates is popular on both sides of the aisle and with the military. And he has that most elusive of Washington strengths: credibility. People listen to him.

A cynic, if the cynic was so inclined, might think that Obama used Biden and his foreign policy expertise to get elected and then cast his running mate aside. The cynic might conclude that such a move sounds like the politics-as-usual creed that candidate Obama decried. Even more amazing to the cynic would be this thought: Who would have imagined that garrulous Joe Biden’s silence in November would say more than he did audibly in October about the man he helped elect president?

Lucky for team Obama, cynicism is in short supply these days.

-- Joe Donatelli