Chuck Currie on Joe Biden

As speculation runs rampant that the vice-presidential pick will be Senator Joe Biden (D-DE), the Rev. Chuck Currie blogs about his personal interactions with Senator Joe Biden:

His failure in the race for the White House [in 1988] turned out to be providential for the country. As the chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee he was able – once out of the race – to use his energy and full attention in leading the charge to reject Ronald Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Shortly thereafter he became seriously ill with a brain aneurism. He said at the time he'd been having headaches during the presidential campaign but had ignored them. Biden might have died had he not been forced from the race.

I met him during that campaign. Then-U.S. Congressman Les AuCoin was chairing Biden's Oregon effort (and part of his circle of national advisers) and I was a high school student volunteering for AuCoin. So the congressman and his staff let me tag along when Biden came to Portland for an event. What has always stood out for me from that encounter was how Biden – a Roman Catholic – talked about his faith as part of his stump speech. ...

Biden is a progressive and thought of as extraordinarily intelligent (if not a wee bit too talkative). He might be one of the only politicians in America that lists the on-going genocide in Darfur as one of his top issues. He's not on the same page as Barack Obama on all the issues but a vice-president shouldn't be a clone or a yes-man. I'm convinced he would serve an Obama Administration well in nearly any capacity.

Read the rest. Discuss over there.

Aug. 22, 2008 Posted in elsewhere.