Despite the merits of selecting Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joe Biden, D-Del., as his running mate, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., made a huge tactical, strategic and political error in snubbing the most obvious candidate for vice president, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.Obama looks surly, petty and selfish -- and Clinton looks like a gracious loser who will live to fight the political game another day. The convention has been consumed by gossip about just why Obama didn't even consider her for the second slot. All the public excuses are lame, and the inside story as it is coming out does not indicate the serious thought that he should have given to such an important decision. Senior Obama strategist David Axelrod said that Clinton would not be a "good fit" for the presidential candidate, as though Obama were merely trying on a pair of gloves.
Others repeated the standard mantra that she was too emblematic of the status quo that Obama seeks to shatter. So we are to believe that Biden, a six-term senator who himself ran for president this year but got whipped in the Iowa primary, is a really fresh face with fresh ideas who embodies political change?
No, something else was going on here. And it's probably not pretty. It looks as though Obama simply didn't have the courage to compete any more against the star power of his chief rival -- and her husband. This is not a good omen for standing up against tough world leaders with their own power and congressional leaders of both parties who are not inclined to march to his orders.
-- Marianne Means' "Obama's first big mistake" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer):