Mr. Change
So Mr. “Change, Change, Change” will have as his running mate Mr. “Senator For Ever.”
Bad move, Barack! Whatever Sen. Joe Biden’s good points, and there’s no doubt he has many, you passed up the “right guy:” Sen. Evan Bayh. You could have had a proven greyhound. Instead you took an attack dog who often doesn’t know when to stop barking.
For one thing, Biden’s 36 long years in the U.S. Senate may generate some hard-to-rebut arguments from the Republicans that Sen. Obama’s change-change mantra is really just the same old politics as usual. Biden’s spent more than half his life in the Senate, and the only other elected office he’s held was as a member of the New Castle County (Del.) Council for a total of two years.
On the other hand, Evan Bayh has been the Indiana secretary of state; served two terms as governor; and has now been in the Senate for 10 years.
As governor, Bayh created the largest state budget surplus in Indiana history, pushed a tax cut through the state legislature, and presided over eight straight years of no state tax increases. In an era of budget deficits and fumbling, unpopular governors in numerous states, many believe Bayh stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries. He was a textbook example of how to be an effective elected executive.
True, Bayh wasn’t uniformly popular among all Hoosiers. State employees bitterly resented the fact that after supporting a union for those employees during his first run for governor, Bayh apparently changed his mind after getting into office. The employees got no raises for three years. Perhaps that’s where some of the budget surplus came from.
But nevertheless, it just goes to show that a leader can’t always please everybody.
Now that Bayh has served 10 years in the Senate, he has valuable experience as both an executive and a legislator — something Biden has only half of.
Biden tends to put his mouth into gear before his brain is fully engaged — which can be a big problem in the heat of a presidential campaign. Remember his remark about Barack Obama when the Illinois senator first announced his candidacy for president? It was something along the lines of, “He’s the first black candidate who has been articulate, smart and clean.” That went over big, and required some abject apologizing on Biden’s part. Anyone want to bet it won’t wind up in a Republican ad before this campaign is over?
Biden is viewed as an aggressive, attack-dog type campaigner who supposedly will be more effective on the stump than the more mild-mannered Bayh, who considers what he’s going to say before he says it. I know that for a fact, because I interviewed Bayh several times as a reporter at The Madison Courier. Bayh could be frustrating for an interviewer, because he would pause before answering a question, sometimes exchanging a comment or quip with someone else in the room before addressing it. But in retrospect, I realize that was because he was weighing his answer. No blurting out for Evan Bayh.
His campaigning style is less important, or should have been, than his abilities. They were proven in eight years as Indiana’s governor, and in 10 years as a senator. He is a moderate Democrat who proved in a predominantly Republican state that he could reach across the aisle, effectively. He is a man who could have stepped in as president, if necessary.
I’m a Democrat, and I work the polls for my party on election day. I can’t and won’t vote for Barack Obama, however. But Evan Bayh as his running mate would have told me something better about Obama than his choosing of Joe Biden has done.
Old Corporal <corporalko@yahoo.com>
Not Bayh? Wrong guy!, – Saturday, August 23, 2008 at 20:10:07 (EDT)
