The Announcement

As I’ve written before, I like Joe Biden. I think he is the best choice for VP, an experienced and seasoned politician who excels at foreign policy and one-liners. Biden will be the favorite going into the vice presidential debate regardless of who McCain picks—and especially so if that pick is Mitt Romney. Obama made the right choice in an instance where the field was heavy with wrong ones. He vetted the best people in Bayh, Kaine, and Sebelius, all of whom would have been quality additions, while choosing to ignore Clinton, who would have been a disaster.

But that said…

This announcement was botched. So much was made of the text message system, but in the end it got in the way of common sense.
Originally it looked like a brilliant piece of marketing. Even through yesterday, when there were millions of Americans checking their cell phones for clues and updates, even then it looked like it would be a success.

Then 5pm came, and America went home, turned on the Olympics, packed for the beach, and got drunk. No announcement came. Matt Drudge filled the void with a phony report that Bayh was the pick and bumper stickers were being printed. Andrea Mitchell shot that down on NBC and pointed to Biden as the likely choice. Still, there was nothing official from Obama and the country went to bed not knowing for sure who it would be.

By morning the news was hours old. The campaign, for some inexplicable reason, after weeks of hyping the text message system, chose to send that text in the middle of the night.

Maybe it woke you up. Maybe it didn’t.

Yesterday I thought releasing this information on a Friday evening was the worst possible time. I was wrong. Releasing it in the middle of the night to a sleeping nation was much worse.