Bidenfreude

Senator's Barack Obama's selection of Senator Joe Biden to be his vice-presidential running mate is already producing some handsome dividends for the Republicans. Andrew Sullivan's reaction is a case in point.

Sullivan is unashamedly of the opinion that the Dick Cheney vice-presidency has been a total disaster for the Republic over the last eight years. This is a criticism not just of Dick Cheney himself but of the "Dick Cheney model" of the White House in which a powerful, experienced, eminently well-connected vice-president acts as a "fixer" to compensate for a weak, inexperienced president. Today, Sullivan is making the case that Obama needed a "liberal Dick Cheney" all along:

The biggest emerging problem with the Obama campaign is Obama's reluctance, lack of talent and lack of will to get into lively, feisty, pissing matches with his opponent. This was brought home in the Saddleback forum. What he needs is a plucky, fun, free-wheeling attack machine, with the necessary gravitas to express adequate contempt for the Bush administration's fatally misguided foreign policy without in any way seeming defensive.