Needlenose

To people worried about the seeming centrist tilt (um, wait, can you tilt to the center?) of many of president-elect Barack Obama’s appointees, this morning’s announcement that progressive economist Jared Bernstein has been named as VP Joe Biden’s top economic adviser should be good news.

Yes, I know that folks like Atrios, Matt Yglesias, and others have raised questions about just how much clout Bernstein will have as the vice president’s economic adviser, rather than one of the familiar posts formulating policy for the top guy, but I think that in some ways, this may be more of a feature than a bug.

It seems noteworthy that the Obama-Biden team created this position for Bernstein, apart from the established organizational chart.  The strategy might be to keep Bernstein free of administrative responsibilities and turf battles, able to survey the whole range of economic policymaking and express his views as he sees fit.

Given that he’ll be able to do so not only directly in group sessions but via Biden as the latter meets individually with Obama, that could be a fairly influential role.  Anyone who’s seen Dick Cheney use the VP office’s lack of official duties (or restraints) to informally shape an entire administration should be pleased that it could work in our favor this time around.

Oh, and one last note.  SusanG wrote at Daily Kos that:

Bernstein posted quite a few diaries here, mostly in the summer of 2006, focusing for the most part on the debilitating effects of conservative economic ideology–or what he called “Your [sic] On Your Own” (YOYO) economics.

That phrase turned up in Obama’s campaign rhetoric in the spring (and his nomination acceptance speech) as a retort to Bushites’ pretensions of creating a so-called ownership society (“What it really means is that you’re on your own”).   And Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity cites comments by National Economic Council nominee Larry Summers to claim that Bernstein “seems to have pulled some of the centrist economists towards his point-of-view, rather than vice versa.”

So if you’re writing off Bernstein as a token liberal whose job will consist of being ignored, you might want to think again.  (I hope.)

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

“Thanks for explaining how to use the bureaucracy to circumvent the President and impose my own policies… Hillary passes along her thanks, too!”

(Via Reuters:  “Vice President Dick Cheney bids farewell to Vice President-elect Joe Biden, following their nearly hour-long visit at the vice president’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington.”)

I couldn’t possibly summarize the Biden/Caribou Barbie debate better than the Rude Pundit.  Here is the nutshell:

Joe Biden kicked Sarah Palin’s perky ass from one end of that stage to another. It was humiliating, watching the bizarro display of Palin, this talking points automaton set on “spunk,” absolutely failing to impart any cogent thoughts or cohesive answers or even string together the surprisingly full sentences she spoke into anything like a policy

Greenboy sez “Check it out!”

Souiee!  The CongrAssclowns are at it again, both sides wallowing in an orgy of pork fat under cover of a (supposedly) must-pass bailout bill.  Check it out, the bailout bill headed for the House is larded with billions of dollars in earmarks, mostly in the form of tax breaks to strategically important industries like wooden arrow toymakers and rum distillers.  How can you possibly make a Shrubya attack on the Treasury worse?  Run it through Congress!  This is fucking unbelievable!  And of course forked-tongue McBush, who not last week was trash-talkin’ about earmarks is supporting this bill.  I’m glad Biden (finally) called him on the ‘Maverick’ bullshit.  Maverick the TV show maybe - Hollywood fantasy.

I think it’s time for us to restart the “Share Our Wealth” society outside both venal parties and put some pressure on those putzes.

Pretty funny stuff.

(Barack Obama and Joe Biden campaigning in the rain in Virginia yesterday, via the Washington Post.)

Photo 1:

(John Kerry and Barack Obama at the Democratic convention yesterday, via Reuters.)

Photo 2:

(Joe Biden at the podium of the Democratic convention, via Agence France Presse.)

Uh-oh… someone heard wrong when Obama and Biden were told about the “need to appeal to swing voters.”

(Photo via the Associated Press.)

(Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in June 2007, via the Associated Press.)

Yesterday, Dan Balz wrote for the Washington Post:

This is Veep Week. That, in reality, is about all that anyone outside Sen. Barack Obama’s inner, inner circle knows — that sometime before next week the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee will announce his running mate. Beyond that, the political world is in a zone of fevered speculation. . . .

As Obama completed his Hawaii vacation, there was a widespread assumption, based on nothing solid from the campaign, that he could make his announcement early this week and stage a multi-day rollout. Now, in a twist that goes against recent history, there are signs that Obama may wait to announce his choice until this weekend or just before in hopes of providing a big boost before the convention opens Monday in Denver.

There’s a simple reason for Obama not having an extended look-here’s my-VP rollout –if you look the list of likely suspects, there simply isn’t anyone (save the apparently unlikely Hillary Clinton) who would merit any degree of hype. For better or worse, it’s an unexciting bunch.

In any event, despite the excellent chance of being proven wrong within minutes of posting this, I’d like to go ahead and flesh out the longshot hunch I floated last week that Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island will be announced later this week as Obama’s pick for vice president.

First, though, I ought to acknowledge the main reason he’s not considered a front-runner — seemingly outright denials like this one in a Rhode Island paper three weeks ago:

Reed was asked in an interview Friday afternoon: “If you were offered this position you would decline, is that correct?”

“Yeah,” he answered, “but frankly I don’t expect to be offered the position.” Reed added, “I want to continue to be a legislator.” Reed said, further, that he has not been asked by the Obama campaign to answer questionnaires, put investigators in touch with accountants, or take other such steps necessary for checking the background of a vice-presidential prospect. That fact, Reed said, makes his point that a slot on Obama’s ticket “is not an offer that I will have to refuse.”

Reed, a comparatively little-known senator outside Washington, is widely known inside the Capitol as an experienced hand on defense and foreign policy issues. He went to West Point, served as an officer in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and is a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. On that basis, some pundits speculated early in this year’s Democratic nominating contest that Reed might be a good running mate for Illinois Democrat Obama, should he win the party’s nomination.

But Reed issued an almost Shermanesque declaration of non-interest in the vice presidency in February. “I have no intention to seek it,” he said of the second position on a Democratic ticket, “or even, if offered it, to accept.”

Asked Friday whether he stands by that statement now, Reed said, “I’m exactly where I was six months ago and probably a year — long before it was obvious that Barack Obama would be the Democratic nominee.”

So why do I think that Reed has a revisionist statement like “I turned him down, but he persisted” in his future? Well, let’s look at some of the less-remarked-upon parts of what Obama himself said about his pick yesterday:

I want somebody who has integrity, who’s in politics for the right reasons . . . who shares with me a passion to make the lives of the American people better than they are right now. I want someone who is not in it just because they want to have their name up in lights or end up being president. I want somebody who is mad right now, that people are losing their jobs. And is mad right now that people have seen their incomes decline, and want to rebuild the middle class in this country. That’s the kind of person that I want; somebody who in their gut knows where they came from and believes that we have to grow this country from the bottom up.

Now, let’s take a look at Reed’s official Senate biography:

Throughout his career in the United States Congress, Jack Reed has been an advocate for working-class families. . . .

. . . In June of 2008 the New York Times noted: “Mr. Reed has had a passion for housing issues throughout his career. Beginning in the early 1980s when, as a young lawyer, he did pro bono work for Amos House, a Providence soup kitchen and social service agency, and continuing after his election to the Rhode Island Assembly, the House and finally the Senate.”

Recently, he co-authored legislation to create a new affordable housing trust fund, improve consumer disclosures on mortgages, and address the needs of middle-class families who are struggling with the fallout from the housing crisis.

Jack Reed was born and raised in Cranston, Rhode Island. His father, Joe, was a World War II veteran and Cranston school janitor who worked his way up to become custodial supervisor of the city’s school system.

That humble, service-focused background sounds kind of compatible with that of a certain Democratic presidential nominee, doesn’t it? And then there’s that whole West Point-82nd Airborne pedigree, combined with Reed’s opposition to the Iraq war and expertise on foreign policy. The guy’s resumé is just plain perfect.

Yes, picking him might cost the Democrats a Senate seat, but that appears to be the case for several of the top candidates, so it’s a bullet Obama may well have to bite in any event. (Just like it’s not such a red flag that he claims not to have been “vetted,” since like the other senators on the short list he’s had to file financial disclosures for years.) And he may not be as effective an attack dog as Joe Biden or Jim Webb, but that also reduces the risk that Obama will be hammered for something (supposedly) offensive that his veep pick says.

In fact, I suspect his modesty and ability to deflect attention is a plus in Obama’s book. And on top of everything else, as if to underscore the value of his expertise, background, and temperament, “Obama/Reed” sounds grounded in a way that “Obama/Biden,” “Obama/Kaine,” or (heaven forbid) “Obama/Bayh” don’t.

So maybe that’s real reason for my hunch. Jack Reed for VP… because Barack Obama needs a guy with a mainstream-sounding name on his team! Good enough to base a wild guess on, if you ask me.

Update 1: Newsweek’s Howard Fineman makes the case for it being Joe Biden, who’s my fallback guess (and was my first hunch back in January).

Update 2: (8/21) As so often occurs, Swopa leads, and the pundits follow — in this case, neocrook Bill Kristol and the New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn saw the same hints I did in Obama’s remarks.