Senator Biden Will Be Senator Obama's Running Mate; Also, Who Else Thinks Rick Warren Is Really Creepy?

IS SENATOR OBAMA JUST "BIDEN" HIS TIME? I THINK SO.

This evening, NBC's Andrea Mitchell (who I thought should have taken over for Tim Russert as host of NBC's "Meet the Press," and I mean no offense to Tom Brokaw when I say that) reported that Senator Joe Biden is the name most of her sources are telling her will most likely be named as Senator Barack Obama's running mate. Her sources either can't or won't yet specify a particular date between now and the Democratic National Convention when the decision is to be made public.

Stability in Afghanistan is presently slipping; Pakistani President Musharraf (who represents nearly the entirety of the Bush Administration's Pakistan policy) is being forced out of office through the threat of impeachment in Afghanistan's nuclear-armed neighboring country; Iraqi progress is anything but set in concrete; Russia is still occupying one of its smaller and more democratic neighbors (Georgia); Iran is always throwing a potentially dangerous monkey wrench or two into the mix; and China and India (amongst many others) are demanding increasingly large amounts of worldwide oil supplies (with Russia flexing its petro-derived muscles). It seems clear to me that Senator Obama, whose judgment is very strong but who could use someone with decades of foreign experience on the ticket, would indeed be leaning toward Senator Biden to be his running mate.

Senator Evan Bayh is a good guy, and his centrist credentials would probably help Senator Obama in some swing-states, but he's primarily known as a careful politician with an easy manner...and little else. Alternatively, Governor Kaine's obvious chemistry with Senator Obama would most likely make for an impressive working relationship between the two, but he has little foreign experience. Hence, I will be a bit disappointed if the foreign and domestic political gravitas of Senator Biden isn't added to the Obama ticket. (Don't worry--if it's not an Obama/Biden ticket, I'll get over my disappointment quite quickly and support either Obama/Bayh, Obama/Kaine, Obama/Richardson, Obama/Clinton, or whatever Senator Obama decides upon.) In fact, with Senator Biden returning to the U.S. from Georgia (theirs, not ours) on a fact-finding mission today, I'm ready to make a prediction....

PREDICTION: I am convinced that Senator Biden will be Senator Obama's running mate.

(Feel free to laugh at me if I'm wrong; I've been wrong before.)

RICK WARREN: A CREEPY, GENERIC, TRADEMARKED PSEUDO-"PREACHER"

I don't find it surprising that the focus of the CNN "values"-oriented forum aired this past weekend was on the responses that Senators Obama and McCain gave to the questions posed by Pastor Rick Warren, because that's as it should be, given that they are presently the two most scrutinized people in the United States, and probably the world. My take on their responses is that I appreciated Senator Obama's humble, if politically careful, answers to such topics as "evil" and "energy," amongst others. I found Senator McCain's pat, morally certain answers a bit arrogant, if crowd-pleasing, in nature. We've had an arrogant, morally-certain individual in the White House for seven-plus years, and it's resulted in anything but consistent success, in both the domestic and foreign realms. Senator Obama may seem "too academically thoughtful" for some voters, but I much prefer his thoughtfulness and caution over policies based on under-preparation and culturally myopic thinking that plays-out like cowboys who've never read a book in their lives rushing-in where angels fear to tread.

What I do find mildly surprising about Saturday's event, however, is that there has not as yet been a lot of discussion about Pastor Rick Warren, who I admit I had never heard of before the event, and who I subsequently found to be a rather smug, self-satisfied, trademarked "reverend" type who had the effect of oozing pseudo-intelligence and a lack of authenticity nearly every time he asked an extended question. He reminds me of your next door neighbor who is rather intelligent and seems okay but who you know is a bit "off" somehow, and who confirms it by going off on tangents during which he suggests that he and God exchanged phone numbers long ago, and during which you think to yourself, "My goodness, he's just clever enough to get a lot of somewhat confused, mediocre people to think that he's their conduit to enlightenment."

In the interests of putting all of my cards on the table, I do believe in God as a concept and as a necessarily nebulous entity (if we knew the exact nature of God, religion would not be religion--it would be science), and I therefore disagree with both atheists and religious fundamentalists, both of which groups I often find to be arrogant in their "certainty" regarding the exact nature and/or existence of God. I'm not particularly enamored of organized religion, but I do admire small, local places of worship in which people and their religious guides must often deal with each other in a micro- and individual manner. It forces people to be authentic with one another. However, I find mega-churches to be like zombie holding-tanks, where folks go in order to hear macro-generic platitudes from so-called "pastors" who seem to have been pre-packaged and shipped all over the country from corporate warehouses. Their focus is centered on nothing but the status quo, in more ways than one, though it's not designed to look that way to those who would rather not examine the situation closely.

So we come full-circle to Rick Warren, whose every utterance and gesture projects "I'm-a-good-guy" to such an extent that you know it's pre-packaged nonsense. (Even his goatee and head hair--or at least one of the two--is artificially colored.) It reminds me of Pauline Kael's suggestion that in the late 1970's/early 1980's era the film industry degraded to such an extent that authentic films were shoved aside for video games and marketing strategies; "...if you want backing for a film [these days]," Kael wrote, "there'd better be a video game in it." Rick Warren is a mediocre, commercialized video game disguised as a good film, and millions of Americans love him for it. Or perhaps they love themselves for embracing the lazy commerical machine that is the status quo. After all, it keeps them from ever having to think critically.