By KUNA,
Washington : Barack Obama tapped Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as his vice presidential running mate early Saturday, choosing a Washington veteran with deep international experience.
Senator Obama announced his decision on his website and via text message around 3:00 a.m., ending a week of intense speculation.
Biden, 65, ran for president in 1988 and this year. He is a fiesty, passionate “happy warrior” who will bring balance to the Democratic Party ticket in a year when the Republican Party, under Senator John McCain, will try to retain control of the White House despite the deep unpopularity of two-term incumbent President George W. Bush.
Biden, a lawyer, was first elected to the US Senate in 1972, where he also has served as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with its jurisdiction over US Supreme Court nominees and constitutional issues.
Obama and Biden were scheduled to appear together on Saturday afternoon at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, the home state of Obama and the backdrop Obama used to announce his candidacy for president in early 2007.
Biden is Roman Catholic and blue-collar in his appeal, two areas where Obama, the 47-year-old political upstart who became the first African-American to win a major US presidential party nomination, had difficulty during his ultimately successful campaign for the nomination against New York Senator Hillary Clinton.
Biden will add significant experience in defense and foreign policy issues to the ticket, two areas in which Obama has not polled as well as McCain, the 71-year-old Senate veteran and Vietnam War hero.
While Obama won the Democratic nomination largely by emphasizing his opposition to the US invasion of Iraq in a 2002 speech before Bush launched the war in 2003, Biden voted to authorize the war. But Biden later became one of the strongest critics of the way the war was conducted.
Biden’s son, Beau, attorney general of Delaware, is due to spend a tour of duty in Iraq beginning this fall with his National Guard unit.