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Biden choice reflects Obama campaign refocus
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 | Race for the presidency The trips, the speeches, and the moments of Decision ’08. A look at the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain. more photos |
 | Video: Decision '08 |
Turning Point: 2008 Nov. 5: NBC's Tom Brokaw recaps the historic election of America's first black president. Produced by msnbc.com's Kevin Flynn. |
While polls show voters are most concerned about the country's wobbly economy — home mortgage foreclosures, high fuel and food costs and growing unemployment — McCain's appeal appears to be growing out of the lingering shock to Americans' sense of security from the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
McCain called Biden a "wise selection," but said he believed there was still plenty to criticize.
"I know that Joe will campaign well for Senator Obama, and so I think he's going to be very formidable," McCain told CBS News. "I've always respected Joe Biden, but I disagreed with him from the time he voted against the first Gulf War to his position where he said you had to break Iraq up into three different countries. We really have different approaches to many national security issues."
As Democrats quickly coalesced around Obama's selection of Biden, Republicans recycled the Delaware senator's less-than-favorable past descriptions of Obama during the Democratic primary campaign when he, too, was seeking the party's nomination.
"There has been no harsher critic of Barack Obama's lack of experience than Joe Biden," McCain campaign spokesman Ben Porritt said in a statement.
Biden should appeal to working-class voters
While Biden has been in the Senate 35 years and is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, a boost to the ticket's resume in foreign affairs, Obama also expects his running mate to help him appeal to middle- and working-class voters in battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania who favored Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who nearly upended Obama in the primaries.
"For decades, he has brought change to Washington, but Washington hasn't changed him," Obama said, attempting to blunt an emerging Republican line of attack that notes Biden's long tenure in the Senate.
"He's an expert on foreign policy whose heart and values are rooted firmly in the middle class."
Biden picked up on Obama's pledge to bring change to the nation, criticizing McCain as offering a continuation of Bush's unpopular policies.
"You can't change America when you know your first four years as president will look exactly like the last eight years of George Bush's presidency," Biden said.
McCain, who is expected to announce his running mate on Friday, holds a 2-1 lead over Obama as more knowledgeable on world affairs and as better suited to be commander in chief, according to an ABC News-Washington Post poll released early Sunday. The same poll, which gave Obama a slight 49 percent to 43 percent lead, found that three-fourths said the addition of Joe Biden as Obama's running mate would make no difference in their vote, while the remainder were evenly split on whether it would make them more or less likely to vote for Obama.
Several Republican officials, meanwhile, said that McCain had not settled on a running mate, although former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty were under serious consideration.
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