CNN

How should Obama make the best use of Biden?

FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:

Today we're going to spend a couple of minutes talking about the vice presidential candidate who actually won the election, Joe Biden. Remember him?

After 9-11, one of the first things President Bush did was find a secure, undisclosed location in which to store his Vice President, Dick Cheney. Once hidden away, Cheney could begin pulling the strings for the new administration. Secret energy meetings with that fun bunch from Enron, drawing up plans to invade Iraq as well as the lies they would need to cover it, figuring out how to operate the most secretive administration in history without being accountable to anyone. He had his assignment clearly defined right from the start.

It's always been a bit of a problem figuring out what to do with the vice president. As long as the president's alive, his official job description is limited. Break the ties in the Senate, sit behind the congressional leaders during the State of the Union address, and try to look interested when out in public.

Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University says Biden could best be put to use soothing a Democratic Congress that's had a tense relationship with the Executive Branch in recent years. He believes Biden should be "a point man on Capitol Hill to help twist arms, make arguments and build voting coalitions."

Here’s my question to you: How should Barack Obama make the best use of Vice President-elect Joe Biden?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

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FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:

Senator Joe Biden is never at a loss for words. That is both the good news and the bad news.

See not everything Biden says is helpful to the Democrats' cause.

Example: He told the CBS Evening News this week that in 1929 "when the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened,'"

Only FDR wasn't in office in 1929 and there wasn't any television then either.

In the same interview, he called an Obama ad attacking McCain as computer illiterate "terrible." Last week, he criticized the government bailout of AIG without checking with the campaign first. Barack Obama later said, quote, "I think Joe should have waited."

There's more. Biden said that paying higher taxes was the patriotic duty of the rich. And earlier this month he told a crowd that Hillary Clinton may have been a better vice presidential pick than he was. Like we said…never at a loss for words.

Here’s my question to you: Is Joe Biden an asset or a liability for Barack Obama?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

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