Obama Picks Biden

So the hype is finally over. At 3 AM early Saturday morning, Barack Obama told the masses who his running mate would be via text message.

The message read:"Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee. Watch the first Obama-Biden rally live at 3pm ET on www.barackobama.com Spread the word!" My guess is that he'll probably keep those millions of phone numbers handy come election day.

So now that it's official, here's a quick bio of Biden, and it's an interesting one.

He was born in Scranton, PA to a working-class Irish Catholic family. His father, Joe Sr., was a car salesman and struggled to make ends meet.

At 10, Biden and his family moved to Delaware. He went to college there and then got his law degree at Syracuse University. At 27, he was elected to the local city council in Delaware. Two years later, at 29, he ran for the U.S. Senate and won.

A few weeks after his election to the Senate, his wife and baby daughter were killed in a car accident and his two young sons were almost killed. He wanted to resign from the Senate, but ultimately decided to stay on, commuting back and forth from his home in Wilmington every day--something he does to this day-- to take care of his boys.

In 1987, he ran for president but dropped out quickly after he was caught plagiarizing a speech from a British politician. In 1988 he suffered a life-threatening brain aneurysm but recovered fully.

But Biden came back from that and is now a widely respected Senator, from both sides of the aisle. He is now the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was previously the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Here come the pros and cons of pick Biden. Let's start with the pros.

No one knows more about foreign policy than Biden. Anyone in the Senate--even John McCain--or anyone who follows politics would tell you that. And that's incredibly important considering the fact that many people are concerned with Obama's lack of foreign policy experience. Expect the attacks from the McCain campaign regarding Obama's inexperience on foreign policy to lessen in the coming weeks, because they don't want to pick a fight on that topic with Biden.

He also brings along with him 35 years of experience, which balances out the ticket because the main concern undecided voters have with Obama is that he's inexperienced. Older voters especially might feel more reassured about voting for Obama now that's he's got someone old (Biden is 65) and experienced on the ticket.

Biden could also potentially help Obama electorally by appealing to working class folks in northern Appalachia. He could emphasize his working class roots while campaigning in states such as Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, and Ohio. Obama should have no trouble winning Biden's home state of Delaware.

Also, after seven senatorial and two presidential campaigns, he has become a solid campaigner, an excellent debater (as long as he knows when to shut up), and a great attack dog. This especially will be important because Obama is clearly afraid to go negative, even though he knows he has to.

Biden has also become a pro at dealing with the media. And they love him, much like they love Obama (excluding FOX News, of course).

Here's the cons.

Biden cannot stop talking. He always says what's on his mind, and frequently makes verbal gaffes and blunders, like calling Obama "articulate," and going on and on and getting incredibly off-topic during the Roberts and Alito Supreme Court confirmation hearings, and so on and so forth.

The Republicans might also attack him on his plagiarism charge from '88 and say that we can't trust him. Biden has apologized for it several times, and might just do it again along with saying that it was literally decades ago. Two to be precise.

Also, in a debate during the primaries, Biden stood behind a statement he had made about Obama saying that he was too inexperienced to become president and that the job doesn't lend itself to on-the-job training. On top of that, early on in the campaign, Biden said that he would be happy to run with or against McCain. The McCain campaign has already put those two quotes together in a new ad of theirs.

That's about all I've got on Biden. Obama made a great pick. We'll see how long it is until he makes his first gaffe.