Opinion: Boom-Boom. Obama picks Biden; GOP picks Biden to hit Obama

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Well, that didn’t take long.

Some of you are still reading right here on The Ticket that Sen. Barack Obama has chosen Delaware’s Sen. Joseph Biden as his vice presidential running mate on the Democratic Party ticket to be formally nominated in the next few days in Denver.

And, boom, just in time for a leisurely Saturday morning breakfast in any U.S. time zone, here comes the first ad from the campaign of Sen. John McCain, who doesn’t have a running mate yet.

What do you bet he picks a governor instead of yet another Washington insider? Biden does have a lot of foreign policy experience. (He’ll likely be playing down though his Iraq plan to divide the country in three, don’t you think?)

But being a Washington veteran also means that Biden’s been a senator in D.C. since Obama was an 11-year-old. And Obama’s 47 now.

The video of the new McCain ad is below.

The McCain ad (no doubt they had ones prepared for several candidates) is called simply ‘Biden.’ Why?

Because it features Biden himself talking about Obama (you might guess Biden once thought the freshman Illinois senator was not yet ready for primetime) standing right next to Obama, who was looking down his nose wordlessly during a Democratic debate last winter.

And the ad also features Biden talking about McCain; Biden says he’d be honored to run with or against a John McCain. Is it possible the two of them could have an elevated, respectful civil debate over the future of our foreign policy? Can a presidential candidate do that with an opposing vice presidential candidate, who’s supposed to be the attack dog?

Think we’ll be seeing a good deal more of this kind of contrast in the coming weeks? Maybe even as soon as this coming week when McCain’s people buy ads during network coverage of the Democratic Convention.

Speaking of which, here’s a reminder that you can join the growing throngs preparing for the rest of this political season and beyond by having every single Ticket item -- plus special offline Tweets from The Ticket’s writers starting with the two party’s conventions -- sent directly to your cellphone.

To register for instant Twitter updates from The Ticket go here and sign up.

--Andrew Malcolm