By Friday night, the Obama campaign had proven once again its absolute genius at manipulating the media. By keeping Obama’s Vice Presidential nominee a secret for so long and leaking various candidates as favorites on different days, they had whipped up the press into such a frenzy that anticipation was nearingHarry Potter levels, with newsmen actually staking out the houses of Joe Biden and Evan Bayh. There was even an Obama-Bayh bumper sticker printed, possibly on purpose to fake out the press.

So when word finally leaked out on Friday night that Biden was the man, it felt a little anti-climactic, as if the suspense should have presaged a bigger surprise. But it also felt right.

Obama probably wouldn’t have picked Biden as his running mate six months ago, or even two months ago. But things change.

One of the earliest building blocks of Obama’s candidacy was the fact that he opposed the Iraq war from start. But the situation in Iraq has changed drastically in the last few months. Not only is violence down, but a consensus is also emerging about a timetable for withdrawal, and the Bush administration is close to reaching a deal with the Iraqi government that would make it official. Therefore, the fact that Biden voted to authorize the war matters much less. His diplomatic experience and foreign relations expertise are more important.

Russia’s recent invasion of Georgia may have played a role as well. This event seemed to remind people that there are other crises in the world besides Iraq, and that it doesn’t hurt to have a leader who knows how to handle himself. The fact that Biden was not only in Georgia last week, but was also there at the request of President Saakashvilli surely didn’t hurt his VP chances.

But the biggest argument for Biden is the campaign’s recent turn toward the negative. Traditionally, it’s the Vice Presidential nominee’s job to attack the opponent, and this election is beginning to resemble a knife fight. The McCain campaign has declared both Reverend Wright and William Ayres fair game for guilt-by-association attack ads. Obama needs someone to lead the counterattack. And Biden sounds good not only when he’s being indignant, but he’s also well practiced in the art of the political zinger.

One of the drawbacks to having Biden on the ticket is that it dilutes Obama’s message of change. But Obama’s vision of change has, well, changed. In the primary, Obama faced Hillary Clinton. In order to draw a distinction between the two, he argued for break not just from Bush, but from Washington itself; i.e., from the Bushes and the Clintons.

As everyone’s new favorite blogger (and mine) Nate Silver points out, this kind of change was perhaps not the best message in the general election:

The most acute problem with George W. Bush is not that he’s corrupt, not that he’s the inevitable consequence of a broken system, but rather simply that his mode of thinking led him into a series of exceptionally poor decisions that left the country worse off. The problems of the Bush administration are not abstract — they are highly tangible, made more manifest still by the deterioration in the economy that occurred over the first quarter of this year. What CHANGE means now is this:

i) Not Bush, or someone who thinks like him;
ii) Working our way, by any means possible, out of the hole that Bush left us in.

Which is not to say that Biden’s a perfect candidate. He’s gaffe-prone, he can come off as arrogant, and he provides no geographical advantage. Even more troubling, Obama risks looking even more inexperienced next to the uber-experienced Biden, who’s been a U.S. senator for a whopping 35 years.

The obvious point to make is that picking Biden means that Obama must be insecure about his lack of foreign policy experience. But you could just as easily say that he’s secure enough in his own abilities that he doesn’t mind people accusing him of being insecure. At any rate, this kind of reasoning seems like a sucker’s game.

What I think we can learn from Obama’s pick is that he adjusts to new events and new information. This, perhaps, would be the most needed change after eight years of George W. Bush.

–Hillel Aron

Photo by Bob Bobster