Posted on September 16, 2008

by

Daniel Clark

Why is it that when Joe Biden says Hillary Clinton would make a better running mate than he does, he's suddenly presumed to know what he's talking about? Perhaps it's because he's agreeing with both liberal and conservative analysts, who say that Barack Obama committed a tremendous blunder by not selecting the former first lady as his vice presidential candidate. Instead, those pundits should take Biden's endorsement of their theory as an indication that they should reconsider their conclusions. This is not to say that Sen. Biden was necessarily the correct choice, but there are many reasons to believe he's a better pick than Sen. Clinton would have been.

* There's no such thing as "Biden fatigue." -- Most of America is unfamiliar with the Delaware senator, whereas everybody knows who Mrs. Clinton is, and large numbers of people have decided that they've seen enough. Polls have uniformly shown Hillary's negatives to be extraordinarily high and deeply entrenched, and few people know this better than the candidate who defeated her in the primaries.

Furthermore, Obama is running as the candidate of -- all together now -- "change." The last thing he needs is to share the stage with Hillary and her husband, and a host of other relics from the last Democrat administration. Besides, the former president's presence on the campaign trail would remind people that he had run as the "change" candidate in 1992, making Obama's "change" theme appear more insipid than it already does.

* Sen. Clinton would pale in comparison to Gov. Palin. -- There's a world of difference between what feminists call a "strong woman" and someone who really is one, and Hillary belongs in the former category. Conventional wisdom says that John McCain would have picked a different running mate if Obama had picked Sen. Clinton, but what if that's not true?

Sarah Palin is a self-made politician, as opposed to Mrs. Clinton, who has gotten where she is by riding on her husband's shoulders. Because Hillary's future was dependent on Bill's, she became an enabler of all his sordid escapades. She'd wanted to be "co-president," but instead wound up sharing the role of his humiliated secretary, Betty Currie.

When Hillary first ran for the Senate, the media rallied to defend her from the cad Rick Lazio, who had menacingly approached her podium with a sheet of paper during a debate. Mrs. Palin would not feel threatened by a gangly congressman brandishing one gram of wood, and neither would Joe Biden. Had Obama known he'd need a VP candidate to run against a strong woman, he'd have been better off picking a strong man than a weak woman.

* The pro-abortion position is a loser -- By pitting Sen. Clinton against Gov. Palin, Obama would be inviting feminists to make the case that the only "real" women's candidate is the one who is pro-abortion -- an argument based on the fallacy that public opinion on the issue is divided by gender. To the contrary, there is no significant difference of opinion on abortion between men and women. (So much for the "if men got pregnant" canard.) Moreover, most people who base their vote on the abortion issue consistently vote for the anti-abortion candidate.

Obama must also consider his voting record in the Illinois senate, where he determined that an already born child who has survived an abortion attempt should not be protected by law. That's a tremendously unpopular opinion, which he'd naturally prefer not to discuss at this time. By thrusting the issue to the forefront of the campaign, he'd be sullying his own image, with no discernible benefit.

* Hillary's blunders are worse than Biden's -- Perhaps the most potent criticism of Obama's selection is that Biden is a walking gaffe machine, who specializes in offending large numbers of people. It was Hillary, however, who addressed a black audience in an Amos n' Andy voice, offended Italians by calling Al D'Amato "Senator Tomato," and said it's not possible to be both a Republican and a Christian.

Even Biden's infamous remark that "you cannot go into a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent" can't top Mrs. Clinton's joke that Mahatma Gandhi "ran a gas station down in St. Louis for a couple of years." These previous episodes of hers would not likely affect this year's presidential campaign, but she is fully capable of producing more of them, faster than the media are able to shovel them down the memory hole.

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