Biden blinked

Unlike his opposite number, who famously told Charles Gibson she didn't blink when McCain offered her the VP slot on his ticket, Biden actually gave it some thought.

The conversation in Minneapolis ranged from foreign policy and possible appointments to the federal courts to the legislative strategy that would be needed to pass an Obama agenda. Obama wanted to know how Biden had managed his signature achievements—such as the 1994 crime bill, which added a hundred thousand federally funded police officers to city streets. He also tested Biden’s understanding of how broad his role would be, as opposed to that of another contender—apparently, Kathleen Sebelius, the governor of Kansas and the only woman known to be on Obama’s short list. “He said, ‘Well, you know, if I offered this to somebody’—he named her, a person—he said, ‘That person would be very happy if I assigned them to reorganize the government.’ And he said, ‘They’d be very happy doing that. How about you?’ ” That didn’t sound like much of a job to Biden. “No,” he told Obama. “That’s not what I want to do.”

Obama also asked Biden whether he thought that he was more suited to a different position. “He said, ‘You have a great interest in national-security policy, foreign policy,’ ” Biden told me. “He wasn’t offering me this, but he said, ‘Would you rather be Secretary of State instead of Vice-President?’ And I thought a lot about that.”

Biden consulted with his closest political advisers, including Ted Kaufman, Mike Donilon, and John Marttila, all of whom have been with him since the early days of his career. “They convinced me that I could have more influence on policy as a Vice-President with Barack,” Biden said. “And so the bottom line of all of this is that I said, ‘Barack, look, if you’re going to ask me to do this, please don’t ask me for any reason other than that you respect my judgment. If you’re asking me to join you to help govern, and not just help you get elected, then I’m interested. If you’re asking me to help you get elected, I can do that other ways, but I don’t want to be a Vice-President who is not part of the major decisions you make.’ ”

A novel idea. Choosing a vice president ready to help the president govern. The moribund McCain campaign (God, I love the way that phrase rolllllls off the tongue), should have considered that, you betcha.

During Bill Clinton’s first year as President, his most ambitious piece of legislation—a proposal to provide universal health care—was doomed as soon as it got caught in a parliamentary procedure known as the Byrd rule (named after the very senior senator from West Virginia). The rule prohibits “extraneous matter” from being attached to the annual budget bill known as reconciliation, which requires only a simple majority to pass. Instead, Clinton needed sixty votes to overcome a filibuster. “Clinton used to have some trouble with the Robert Byrds of the world,” Biden said, and suggested that he would help Obama overcome such problems. “People point out the other mistakes that Presidents have made in the first hundred days,” he said. “I predict to you that Barack will not make them.”

But he sure says "presumptuous" a great deal.