Oh man I love a good play on words.

I also love House, the Fox TV series about the terribly arrogant and often offensive doctor who manages to dispel most people’s personal objections to his mannerisms by being freakishly smart and, more often than not, right in the end. Truth be told it’s a professional ambition of mine to become so indispensable at whatever the hell I end up doing so that, like with Dr. House, people will put up with the fact that the rest of the time I’m such a pain in the ass.

So at this stage of the political game, I’m a little tired of people still trying to play the “gaffe” card when trying to dismiss Joe Biden from the short list of the veepstakes. You know, sometimes we ought to just cut a guy some slack on the occasional sentence construction disaster if he’s got the brain you need in the room when the fit hits the shan, and you happen to be totally wet behind the ears yourself.

On June 3 the Senate agreed with unanimous consent to a Biden-sponsored resolution, S.Res. 550, “expressing the sense of the Senate regarding provocative and dangerous statements made by officials of the Government of the Russian Federation concerning the territorial integrity of the Republic of Georgia.” (The sentiment originally started brewing back in December ‘07 in the form of Biden’s S.Res. 418.) Well, lotta good Senate resolutions do, huh? But still, there are two names distinctly missing from the short list of co-sponsors; I doubt either presidential candidate even read it, and ours was probably on his way to Iowa from Montana during its hearing.

Today Biden’s got an op-ed in the Financial Times, looking ahead to some of the strategic risks Russia is taking.

…and in the past two months I sponsored two legislative measures intended to nudge Russia toward a closer, more constructive relationship with the United States, including action to allow for increased collaboration with Russia on nuclear energy production. Russia has also lobbied to repeal an old trade provision – the Jackson-Vanik Amendment – which currently blocks the country’s integration into the World Trade Organisation. The fighting in Georgia has erased the possibility of advancing those and other legislative efforts to promote US-Russian partnership in the current Congress. It may derail them permanently if Russia does not reverse course.

For Moscow, the most obvious casualty of the fighting could be the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014 – supposedly the crown jewel in the country’s campaign to reinvent itself.

In response to all that, Washington correspondent John Nichols blogs over at The Nation,

One may agree or disagree with Biden on specifics.
But his awareness of the issues that are at stake and the confidence with which he addresses them is not merely vice presidential.
It is more presidential than that of the current president or the major-party nominees to replace him.
And that makes Joe Biden what Barack Obama needs at this point: a running-mate who can play not just on the stage of a swing state but who on the global stage where the next administration will be required to perform immediately.

Besides, it’d make that Seamus Heaney quote he’s always repeating make so much more sense: But then, once in a lifetime the longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme.



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