Obama and Biden come out swinging

WASHINGTON

Sen. Barack Obama introduced Sen. Joseph Biden as his running mate at a huge and boisterous rally in Springfield, Ill., on Saturday, revealing a choice that strengthens the Democratic ticket's credentials on foreign policy and provides Obama a hard-fighting partner as he heads into the fight with Republican Sen. John McCain.

In Biden, Obama selected a six-term senator best known for his expertise on foreign affairs but also his skills at political combat. Obama passed over other candidates who might have brought him a state's electoral votes or reinforced his message of change.

Outside the Old State Capitol, where he announced his candidacy 20 months ago, Obama offered a passionate and politically instructive introduction of Biden: the portrait of a running mate who filled in what many Democrats have described as the political shortcomings of Obama.

Obama presented Biden as the product of a Catholic blue-collar home in Pennsylvania, someone who had endured personal tragedy in the death of his wife and daughter and his own near-death, who could relate to the culture of the Senate or of blue-collar voters.

"I can tell you that Joe Biden gets it," said Obama, gazing across a sea of thousands of people. "He's that unique public servant who is at home in a bar in Cedar Rapids and the corridors of the Capitol; in the VFW hall in Concord, and at the center of an international crisis."

"That's because he is still that scrappy kid from Scranton who beat the odds; the dedicated family man and committed Catholic who knows every conductor on that Amtrak train to Wilmington," he said.

The choice of Biden was perhaps the most critical decision Obama has made as his party's presumptive nominee. It suggested a concern by Obama's advisers that his overseas trip this summer may not have done enough to deal with persistent voter concerns about his level of experience, especially on national security.

Already playing attack dog

Biden, after trotting onto stage, offered a caustic preview of what he would be doing in the next 10 weeks. He offered a lusty attack on McCain -- "John McCain, and the press knows this, is genuinely a friend of mine; I've known John for 35 years" -- that left little doubt of the attack role he would play at a time when many Democrats have worried that Obama is too restrained of a campaigner.

Pushing back on McCain's efforts to capitalize on his past criticism of Obama, Biden argued that he had seen him grow in the crucible of a presidential campaign in which "you're tested and challenged every single day."

"Over the past 18 months, I've watched Barack meet those challenges with judgment, intelligence and steel in his spine," Biden said. "I've watched as he's inspired millions of Americans to this new cause. And during those 18 months, I must tell you, frankly, I have been disappointed in my friend John McCain, who gave in to the right wing of his party and gave in to the Swift Boat politics he once so deplored."

And in a sign to McCain that friendship only goes so deep in politics, Biden went so far as to mock McCain for owning at least seven houses, as he talked about the kitchen table conservations struggling Americans were having today. "That's not a worry John McCain has to worry about," he said. "It's a pretty hard experience: He'll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at."

Praise from Hillary Clinton

At the end of Obama's vice presidential hunt, he was working off a list of four contenders, including Biden, who learned he was the choice while at a dentist's office Thursday as his wife was getting a root canal.

The other contenders were Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas. It did not, by every account, include Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Clinton issued a statement Saturday praising the choice and calling Biden "an exceptionally strong, experienced leader and devoted public servant."

However, it is hardly clear that Clinton's supporters -- many of whom have made no secret of their distress -- would react the same way as Democrats begin arriving in Denver for their convention on Monday.

Highly scripted and a few slips

The announcement, typical for the Obama campaign, was elaborately arranged, from the setting -- the place where Abraham Lincoln once served -- to, it appears, the choice of ties of the two men: red for Obama and blue for Biden.

Still, both men each made amusing verbal slips.

As he wrapped up his remarks, Obama turned and said, "So let me introduce to you, the next president, the next vice president of the United States of America -- Joe Biden."

Biden offered a new and presumably welcome twist to the frequently mangled name of the presumptive Democratic nominee, as he paid tribute to the "next president of the United States -- Barack America!"