English
USA - 2008 election: Obama hails ‘distinguished’ Biden
Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for the US presidency, has officially announced he has chosen Delaware senator Joe Biden as his vice-presidential running mate, hailing him as a “distinguished leader”. Obama told a cheering 35,000-strong crowd at a rally in his state of Illinois on Saturday: “I searched for a leader who is ready to step in and be president. “A man with a distinguished record, a man with fundamental decency, and that man is Joe Biden.” Obama’s campaign workers had confirmed the choice in a text messages and emails sent to millions of supporters earlier on Saturday. The 65-year-old Biden is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a highly respected voice in the US on international affairs. He has twice sought the Democratic nomination for the White House and has served more than 30 years in the Senate. After appearing at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, where Obama launched his presidential campaign, they are to tour some of the key battleground states, including Iowa and Montana. Filling the gaps Rob Reynolds, Al Jazeera’s senior Washington correspondent at the rally in Illinois, said that Biden complements Obama as he is strong in several areas where some voters perceive the Illinois senator is lacking.
“Obama chose to go with experience - someone who could help him overall, to complement what he lacks, which is long time experience in foreign policy, in Washington and in the legislative process for example. “Domestically, Biden fills some gaps too. One of them being support among working-class Catholic voters in very important states like Pennsylvania and Ohio. That’s where Hillary Clinton trounced Obama - in these depressed steel-mining or manufacturing cities. “Biden has these working-class roots, a Catholic base and a strong family image, so Obama’s hope is that he will go to these people and say, “Obama is an ok guy, he’s acceptable to me, and so he should be acceptable to you”.” “But, you have to question how much a running mate really matters in the election,” Reynolds said. ”There have been very strong running mates for failed candidates in the past.”
McCain’s campaign said that the choice showed that Obama was not ready to serve as president himself. “There has been no harsher critic of Barack Obama’s lack of experience than Joe Biden,” Ben Porritt, a spokesman for McCain’s campaign said in a statement. “Biden has denounced Barack Obama’s poor foreign policy judgement and has strongly argued in his own words what Americans are quickly realising, that Barack Obama is not ready to be president.” Senior Republican officials say that McCain has not settled on a choice of vice-president, although Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts and Tim Pawlenty, governor of Minnesota, were being considered. Challenge Before naming Biden, Obama had told CBS’ “Early Show” that he had decided on someone who will be prepared to step in as president, can help him govern and will be independent. “I want somebody who is going to challenge my thinking and not simply be a yes person when it comes to policy-making,” he said. Toby Chaudhuri, a Democratic strategist, said that “the Obama-Biden ticket has a ring to it”. “There is a lot of electricity there, even though everybody will dice it up and think about which constituencies are going to be more likely to vote for the ticket now, at the end of the day it is about the chemistry between these two folks,” he told Al Jazeera. “When you add Biden to it, you add a populism to the ticket that may not have existed before, in addition to all the credibility that comes with his experience.” The move comes as the Democratic party is preparing for its annual convention in the city of Denver in Colorado next week, where both Obama and his vice-presidential choice are due to speak. |
Subscribe=>
Source: Al Jazeera More Top News
Hollywood heavyweights Robert De Niro and Al Pacino reunited on the red carpet in New York Wednesday night for the premiere of their new crime thriller “Righteous Kill” — their first film together since making 1995’s “Heat.”
The movie also stars
The Pakistani Army has been given orders to retaliate against any unilateral strike by the Afghanistan-based US troops inside the country.
Army Spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas confirmed the orders in a brief interview with Geo News on late Thursday night.
The
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says he will not accept military action or new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities.
“We should not take any unilateral steps. It is not acceptable to opt for a military scenario. It would be dangerous,”
As the world marks the seventh anniversary of 9/11, some European experts say security improvements in the US have been undercut by fairly basic mistakes. Among the remedies is more trust in America’s laws and allies.
Seven years after the attacks
David Miliband has allegedly come in for a rather undiplomatic tongue-lashing from his Russian counterpart.
The Foreign Secretary was apparently given a furious dressing down by Sergei Lavrov over the telephone.
Mr Miliband’s criticism of Russia’s recent incursion into Georgia is believed
PIETERMARITZBURG, South Africa - A South African judge ruled Friday that prosecutors were wrong to charge ANC President Jacob Zuma with corruption, effectively clearing way for the 66-year-old former freedom fighter to become the country’s next president.
Judge Chris Nicholson’s ruling
Thailand’s political turmoil deepened Friday when the ruling coalition failed to turn up to parliament to reelect leader Samak Sundaravej as prime minister.
Lawmakers from the six-party coalition did not attend an emergency session of parliament called to choose a prime minister, three days after a court stripped Samak of power for accepting payments for hosting