Biden-tity: Where's Joe?
From Politico ~ More than three weeks into the transition, and Vice-President elect Joe Biden generates less buzz than the non-existent first puppy.
The vice president-elect has not spoken publicly since the election, and was at Barack Obama's side just once this week as the president-elect delivered a series of grim news conferences on the economy.
Obama instead appears to be at the center of his longtime Chicago circle. His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and senior adviser David Axelrod were each at two of Obama's press conferences, and Valerie Jarrett, another senior adviser, joined him during a media-frenzied local lunch stop last Friday. Emanuel and Axelrod have also both already made the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows, where Biden used to be a familiar face.
"I think as the president-elect gets to know the vice president-elect and understands his strengths, he'll rely on him a little more," said Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who has known Biden for 30 years. "Right now you're almost in the campaign mode still and so you really rely on the people who've been around since the beginning."
Still, it's a precipitous drop in profile from just three months ago, when 47-year-old Obama, dogged by critics who deemed him an elitist who lacked experience, selected as his running mate Biden, a foreign-policy expert who'd been in the Senate since his new boss was in elementary school but still rode Amtrak to work.
"He's stared down dictators and spoken out for American cops and firefighters," Obama said as he introduced Biden in Springfield, Ill. on a Saturday in late August. "He is uniquely suited to be my partner as we work to put our country back on track."
But even on the trail the tightly controlled campaign kept a close watch on the gaffe-prone Biden as he was dispatched to court Jews in South Florida and blue-collar workers in Pennsylvania. Nor has his role as vice president, a high-profile office with at best nebulous powers, yet been defined, leaving a vacuum filled only with speculation.
Amid reports that Obama will name Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State the question swirled: What about Biden? Foreign policy was supposed to be his domain.
"You think he wasn't in on that conversation?" a source involved with the transition asked rhetorically.
Yet in a column last week The Washington Post's David Ignatius called Biden "the incredible shrinking vice president-elect.""Where is he these days?" Ignatius wonders. "Do they have him in a box? He can't be happy at the idea of considering Clinton as foreign policy tsarina — wasn't Biden's foreign policy savvy the reason he was picked?"
The vice president-elect has not spoken publicly since the election, and was at Barack Obama's side just once this week as the president-elect delivered a series of grim news conferences on the economy.
Obama instead appears to be at the center of his longtime Chicago circle. His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and senior adviser David Axelrod were each at two of Obama's press conferences, and Valerie Jarrett, another senior adviser, joined him during a media-frenzied local lunch stop last Friday. Emanuel and Axelrod have also both already made the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows, where Biden used to be a familiar face.
"I think as the president-elect gets to know the vice president-elect and understands his strengths, he'll rely on him a little more," said Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who has known Biden for 30 years. "Right now you're almost in the campaign mode still and so you really rely on the people who've been around since the beginning."
Still, it's a precipitous drop in profile from just three months ago, when 47-year-old Obama, dogged by critics who deemed him an elitist who lacked experience, selected as his running mate Biden, a foreign-policy expert who'd been in the Senate since his new boss was in elementary school but still rode Amtrak to work.
"He's stared down dictators and spoken out for American cops and firefighters," Obama said as he introduced Biden in Springfield, Ill. on a Saturday in late August. "He is uniquely suited to be my partner as we work to put our country back on track."
But even on the trail the tightly controlled campaign kept a close watch on the gaffe-prone Biden as he was dispatched to court Jews in South Florida and blue-collar workers in Pennsylvania. Nor has his role as vice president, a high-profile office with at best nebulous powers, yet been defined, leaving a vacuum filled only with speculation.
Amid reports that Obama will name Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State the question swirled: What about Biden? Foreign policy was supposed to be his domain.
"You think he wasn't in on that conversation?" a source involved with the transition asked rhetorically.
Yet in a column last week The Washington Post's David Ignatius called Biden "the incredible shrinking vice president-elect.""Where is he these days?" Ignatius wonders. "Do they have him in a box? He can't be happy at the idea of considering Clinton as foreign policy tsarina — wasn't Biden's foreign policy savvy the reason he was picked?"
Labels: Barack Obama, Joe Biden
posted by Mike McCarville @ 9:48 AM
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