Blogosphere Largely Behind Biden as VP Choice

The response to Barack Obama's choice of Joe Biden as his running mate has met largely positive response. Steve Clemons of Washington Note takes issue with AP's Ron Fournier's critique and offers strong support.

Taking Fournier at face value -- Obama's decision to get someone to bolster his foreign policy/national security credentials seems like a darned smart move to me. We are entering a period of enormous national security challenges abroad and economic challenges at home. It's much easier for Obama to requisition the econ experience needed to promote health care, infrastructure, education, support for those hit hard by the real estate sub prime crisis, and the like.

National security advice is much more tough. It takes years of absorption of what the world has been doing to itself to understand how to organize an effective, disciplined strategic course for the United States -- particularly at a time when the Bush administration has wrecked whatever global equilibrium previously existed.

So does Middle East expert Juan Cole of Informed Comment.

Sen. Biden called me to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq in April 2004, when there was heavy fighting between the Mahdi Army and the US military. He did so on the basis of a journal article I had written on the Sadr Movement in the Middle East Journal, which he had read. That knocked my socks off. People in Washington don't often read journal articles. It struck me as the sort of thing that should happen in our democracy every day-- you write something in your specialty, and your elected representative calls you to talk about it. No lobbies, think tanks, etc. involved. So it was a positive impression! And in the hearing he was informed and articulate.

Ezra Klein of The American Prospect:

All media outlets are reporting it's Biden, which suggests the Obama campaign is ready to take the foreign policy fight to McCain.

Matthew Yglesias of ThinkProgress:

But one clear asset he has is that like only a handful of other prominent Democratic leaders (Wesley Clark one among them) Biden consistently approaches national security debates with an attitude of confidence that projects a desire to win the argument rather than wriggle away from it.

--Ballard Burgher