The Joe Biden Containment Strategy

KT, I read in the NYT about the cuts and consolidations coming down the line. Good luck to you all.

KT,

What sucks is that from everything I have been following it seems things are always turning out worse than they are being protrayed these days. I hope I'm wrong but that's the sucky sucky trend. So take Obama for everything you can. As a matter of fact I would send out the hubby and kids to cover as many local campaigns as they can and stuff their pockets too. Just in case.

KT - great article, as usual. But I mostly want to second Gunny's good wishes to you all. Sheds more light on our "tent costs" conversations last week, and puts into perspective our complaints about the format here. Our complaints are mostly about grieving something that worked for us, and it's sad to see that happening to TIME as a whole. Even if it doesn't directly affect any of you here, the ancillary layoffs surely will, and will be hard. Keeping you all in my thoughts and prayers.

The Biden containment strategy is still very pale when compared to how the McCain folks have handled Palin. Unless it's Fox news, or a local news organization that has prescreened what issues they will talk about.

Bush is live on MSNBC with Kurdistan leader.

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Somebody get Biden in there!

KT -- Also my apologies about beating you up about expenses last week. About the layoffs, I've been through this several times in my career. There are never any winners after it's done. I sincerely hope things work out for you and you family.
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I thought your article was fair and objective. What tactics can news orgs and reporters use to get past this barrier?
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Is reporting an emotional and unscripted moment between candidates and supporter useful in a story? I found a humanity not usually seen in the campaign when you described the conversation Biden had with the daughter of the ice cream parlor owner. How many moments like that one do reporters see in a campaign. Do you have to be on the bus/plane/w/entourage to see this?

oh nevermind it's over.
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Iraq probably doesnt want the US to use thier territoy and airspace to launch anymore international inccidents. Its too bad theyre not actually going to show any of the real conversation.

Likewise regarding the layoffs. I saw that the LA Times got whacked as well. I hope there have been no consequences from that for you, either.

Andy - there was a memorable one for Bill Clinton (I think NH) in 1992, and of course for Hillary in the primary. Often they change voters view dramatically (at least when the moments are believable).

I can't help but feel Biden will regret leaving the Senate for the Vice-Presidency. I feel like it's the same situation as that tiger Roy of Siegfried & Roy "tamed" for show -- and we know how that ended.

KT: thanks for another great article. I add my best wishes for you as Time implements these cuts.
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The part of your story with Biden talking to Sarah Beals really sums up what I have come to love about the guy. He is about as authentic as it gets in realm of politics. That authenticity came through in the debate with Palin when he talked about knowing what it meant to be a single parent and I think Biden's authenticity is why people are willing to forgive him for his frequent gaffes. There is a "That's just Joe" kind of attitude. His stumbles are put into the context of someone who has said a lot of things off the cuff on news shows over the years with ratio of wisdom to gibberish that is markedly high for a modern pol.

I think Joe sort of reminds a lot of people of their uncle who's prone to say embarrassing things, and it humanizes him tremendously. I did spend 5 minutes cursing him out in the car when I heard on the radio about the crisis comment.

2 things.

It's nice that while noting Biden's lack of availability, you aren't taking it as a personal affront and reporting accordingly. I've seen several instances of reporters taking a situation like that and making it about them doing serious harm to the credibilty of the balance of their writing.

Secondly, I thought the Orlando interview might have warranted another two sentences. She was absolutely off the rails, and it would have been nice if that was clearer in the print article.

Overall, very nice work.

It would be easy for folks to underestimate Biden because of his gaffes. It's good to remember that there was a sort of consensus for Joe Biden from the impressive vetting process Obama engaged in, and all the people he consulted.

Tough to write an article when the subject won't talk to you. It's interesting that they're using him as they would have used Clinton, chose him for the reasons they would have chosen Clinton. It seems to be working.
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It IS disappointing that he is as inaccessible as Palin, but not as damaging to him as it is to her. Voters know who Biden is, already. Cosseting her looks a lot worse than preventing him from a critical gaffe down the stretch. (Although I've always that the rep overblown. Just as McCain's towering intellect rep prevented some riproarers from being printed, Biden's rep for gaffes means missteps are more likely to be gaffed rather than ignored or fixed.)

On how he would handle the VP, instaputz found a nut this week. In the NYT, he observed that it's a problem when the VP is deeply engaged in administration policy, because it makes the impeachment mechanism much less effective. If Bush's VP had been a Mitt Romney limited to attending foreign funerals, impeachment might have been more thinkable.

Very good article, KT. I had thought that the media blackout on Biden was the media's fault. Obviously not so.
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And what everyone else said. It certainly does put our complaints about this blog in perspective. Stuff like this thread (Google cache still has the comments, unlike Time's site) is the future of journalism. Good luck with everything in the coming weeks.

PD: I actually found it sort of comical after a while, especially when they told the Dallas Morning News guy he couldn't take pictures on the plane.

That was funny.

KT -- Sarah Palin would have been crucified for talking no matter what her answer was because of the likelihood of being incoherent. But I wonder, after Dana Milbank successfully painted Obama as arrogant -- don't you think that this campaign has no choice but to shy away from any talk about future plans. Perhaps if McCain wasn't trying to push this meme again everyday they might be more willing to engage you on that issue.

Offtopic.
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Atrios points to a very interesting article by Amanda, that looks at a comment in yesterday's politico article about balance in a race where one side is running a brilliant, disciplined campaign, and the other is in a shambles.
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This is on the question of journalists as "liberals" particularly "social liberals."
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Emphasis mine, because I find this sort of statement to be silly in its assumption that there's something noteworthy about that. It's like saying, “Most journalists put their pants on one leg at a time.”
Look, most people are socially liberal. Even most people who consider themselves to be social conservatives live like liberals, but they just live in areas where hypocrisy is a better coping skill than living your values. 95% of people have premarital sex. 98% of women use contraception at some point in time. Divorce rates are high. Most women work. Somewhere between a third and a half of all women will have an abortion by the age of 45.
The question in America is not, “Are you a social conservative or a social liberal?” For the vast majority of people, the question is, “Do you live the values you claim, or are you a giant hypocrite?” Increasingly, the answer to the question depends on where you live---in conservative, rural parts of the country, there's a lot more pressure on people to claim allegiance to values that their behavior betrays. That's why anti-choicers hound abortion clinics out of town---it's not so much that it gets rid of abortion and somehow increases their birth rate, but it just means that women who get abortions have to do it in other towns, and preserve the illusion that the town has a set of values it obviously doesn't.
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Damn. I wanted to preview that. Crossing fingers.

KT wrote: "I think Sarah Palin would have been crucified if someone said it was "presumptuous" for her to talk about it."
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I didn't any see any such activity when Sarah refused to answer Gwen Ifill's questions at the VP debate. She got away with that, didn't she?
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As for Joe, I don't think he wanted to walk into the minefield Sarah did when in front of a reporter, she recalled her conversation with the school childern about what the VP's job is.
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Besides, like any good job candidate, you don't about what you're going to do until you're offered the job, or in this case are elected.