Barack's Biden Bid

I've just returned from a one-week vacation to find It's time to put away the reference photos of John Edwards and dust off the old pix of Joe Biden. I played with several ideas about the yakster from Delaware. Here's one I liked ok but ultimately rejected:

I preferred this cartoon which will be on tomorrow's editorial page:

It may be that Biden will help Obama, but I'm skeptical. He's always struck me as even more self-centered and self-aggrandizing than your average Washington pol. I've only met him once - back in 1987 when he visited the Globe in advance of the Robert Bork Supreme Court hearings. He gabbed on and on while mesmerizing his audience with the whitest teeth known to man -- they looked like they were illuminated from within.

Substantively, he carries some heavy baggage for a would-be populist. He was a consistent supporter of the dreadful bankruptcy bill passed in 2005 and signed by Bush. Here's a good piece by Jackson Williams at Huffington Post on the Senator from Mastercard.