Obama picks experienced Biden as running mate
Washington, 24 August (IranVNC)—Illinois Senator Barack Obama selected seasoned politician Senator Joseph Biden [D-DE] as his running mate yesterday, hoping to negate accusations by Republican rival John McCain that Obama is weak and inexperienced.
By: IranVNC
Published: Sunday, August 24, 2008
11:00GMT—7:00AM/EST
OBAMA – BIDEN – ELECTIONS
Washington, 24 August (IranVNC)—Illinois Senator Barack Obama selected seasoned politician Senator Joseph Biden [D-DE] as his running mate yesterday, hoping to negate accusations by Republican rival John McCain that Obama is weak and inexperienced.
“Obama recognized the gap on national security and he recognized the need to get tougher on McCain, and he chose the guy who can most quickly help him on both counts,” Reuters quotes Democratic consultant and former pollster for President Bill Clinton, Doug Schoen, as saying.
Biden is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a six-term senator, as well as a Roman Catholic from a working-class family – two demographic groups Obama has struggled to win over.
Republicans said the choice highlights first-term senator Obama’s inexperience.
“This is an admission by Barack Obama that he doesn’t have the experience to be president. More than a vice president, he’s looking for a hand-holder or a tutor,” Republican consultant Kevin Madden told Reuters.
Hours after the announcement, the McCain campaign released an advertisement yesterday showing Biden saying last August that Obama was “not ready” to be president.
At his first joint appearance with Obama in Springfield, Illinois yesterday, Biden attacked Arizona senator McCain and repeatedly linked him to President George W. Bush.
“We cannot as a nation stand four more years of this,” Biden said, adding: “You can’t change America when you supported George Bush’s policies 95 percent of the time.”
Biden, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 1988 and 2008, supported the authorization of military action in Iraq in 2002, but soon after became a critic of the war. He has proposed a plan to end the war by dividing Iraq into three largely autonomous ethnic regions – a Shiite, a Sunni and a Kurdish region – held together by a central government in Baghdad, reports AFP.
Similar to Obama, Biden supports direct talks with Iran.
In a press statement last month, Biden said: “The net effect of demanding preconditions that Iran rejects is this: We get no results and Iran gets closer to the bomb.”
Six major powers are negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program, which the West suspects Iran is using to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran says the program is solely peaceful.
“I believe the United States should agree to directly engage Iran, first in the context of the P5+1, and ultimately country-to-country, just as we did with North Korea,” Biden said last month, according to his Senate website.
McCain has said that he opposed presidential-level talks with the Islamic Republic and has called for tighter economic sanctions against the country.
Biden is also a strong supporter of Israel, and travelled alongside Obama to Israel last month, when Obama pledged support for the Jewish state against the threat from Iran.
Sources: Reuters, Senator Joe Biden website, Agence France-Presse
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