Where’s Joe Biden?

By GottaLaff

Where'd ya go, Joe?

The New York Times reports that Obama hasn’t given Biden much of anything to do, much less a portfolio of the kind Bill Clinton entrusted to Al Gore. So what’s Biden up to? Stuffing Christmas stockings for charity. Still refusing to talk to the media. And vetting appointees—even those like Hillary Clinton, whose promotion to Secretary of State will likely limit Biden’s role in foreign policy. “If he had made an argument against it, it would have carried a lot of weight,” a source says of the Clinton nomination. “He was totally in support of it.” Meanwhile, Biden is said to be “honing his economic credentials.”

Here's David Axelrod's take:

“I’m sure that there will be discrete assignments over time,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president-elect. “But I think his fundamental role is as a trusted counselor. I think that when Obama selected him, he selected him to be a counselor and an adviser on a broad range of issues.”

And what's Biden's take?

...Mr. Biden, whose most recent Senate post was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has privately told people that he recognizes he will not be the point man on foreign policy.

Here's what he's been up to:

Mr. Biden has been keeping up with his outreach to foreign leaders; two weeks ago he called the three leading candidates for prime minister of Israel, Tzipi Livni, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. He has also reached out to President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia and Javier Solana, the foreign policy chief of the European Union. [...]

Mr. Biden has been involved in cabinet and policy decisions, offering advice to the president-elect, aides said.

We get it. He's the anti-Cheney (thank god).

“I don’t think there’s any risk of Vice President-elect Biden being marginalized, regardless of who else is in the cabinet,” said Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. [She] characterized the relationship between Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden as “warm and respectful.”

Aww, how cozy and fuzzy and holidayish.

He's too good to waste. I doubt if he'll be ignored, or if he'd let himself be.

Aides say Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama sometimes rib each other in private meetings, and they maintain that Mr. Obama was not unduly angry at Mr. Biden for his gaffe predicting that Mr. Obama would be tested by a world crisis in his first six months in office.

Since then, however, Mr. Biden has not had much to say to the news media. Through a spokeswoman, he declined to be interviewed for this article, itself a break from his voluble past.

I guess for now, it's still "Where's Joe?" But somehow, I have a feeling that won't last too long.