The day after Vice President Joe Biden announced at a White House press conference with Mr. Obama and Mrs. Biden at his side, that he wouldn’t run for president, Senator Lindsay Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who was still in the race for president, was interviewed in Iowa by a reporter who asked, “What do you think of Joe Biden?”
Senator Graham answered, “Joe Biden is the best human being I’ve ever met. If anyone has a problem with Joe Biden, they need help.”
And then Senator Graham said something that forced me to rethink my opinion of this conservative southern Republican. He said:
“When God made Joe Biden he never made a better human being.”
That came to mind amid all of Hillary Clinton’s problems as the Democratic nominee for president. Her biggest problem, of course, is trust. A huge number of Americans -- 54 percent according to one nationwide poll -- say they do not trust her.
In most presidential campaigns a number that high would mean the end of whatever chance that candidate had to be elected. But, when your opponent is donald trump (lower case intended), you can still win the White House.
But assuming the presidency with more than half the people of the country believing you are duplicitous, is a very dubious way to start your first year in office.
It is not in the interest of the People of the United States for any president to commence his or her responsibilities as commander-in-chief when more than half of the people doubt he or she has sufficient integrity to govern.
But that is the dark and dangerous possibility Mrs. Clinton faces come January 20.
The single most positive step Mrs. Clinton can take to lower the element of doubt about her candidacy and her trustworthiness, while raising voter’s confidence, is to name Joe Biden as her secretary of state.
Beginning with John Jay in 1789, there have been 68 secretaries of state. Not one of whom, neither Thomas Jefferson, nor James Madison, nor John Marshall, nor Daniel Webster, nor William Jennings Bryan, nor George C. Marshall, nor Henry Kissinger, went into that office with credentials equal to Joe Biden’s – not one.
As a long-time member and chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, Biden demonstrated extraordinary skill in his leadership of the Senate’s most important committee, not least being his remarkable ability to make friendships across the aisle and across continents.
There are few world leaders the vice president doesn’t know, including three of the most troublesome, Russia’s Putin, Israel’s Netanyahu, and Erdogan of Turkey.
Of course, these world leaders are also known to Mrs. Clinton, from her time as America’s chief diplomat, but Biden’s relationships exceed hers – and then some.
Selecting the vice president as her secretary of state, enabling him to continue his 43 years of public service, as the most respected, most trusted, and most beloved of American political figures, is simply a no-brainer.
Politically, it is the right thing to do.
Nationally, it is the right thing to do.
Diplomatically, it is the right thing to do.
Morally, it is the right thing to do, because there is no better choice for Mrs. Clinton than to name Vice President Joesph R. Biden Jr. as America’s 69th secretary of state.
And how wonderful it would be for the new administration to begin with the president’s nominee for secretary of state confirmed by the United States Senate with all 100 votes.
Now, is my recommendation compromised by the fact that I’ve known the vice president for 45 years?
Absolutely.
But know this:
Apart from my wife, Joe Biden is the best human being I’ve ever known.
Odd, isn’t it, the way politics plays out, that this Kennedy/Dukakis Democrat and a conservative Southern Republican senator should hold the same view of Joe Biden?
But we do.