The perfect attack dog

To keep track of how the Presidential candidates are reaching out to their supporters (and also as a little experiment to gauge whether the various campaigns are keeping their privacy pledges--so far, all of them are), I've signed up at each major candidate's campaign site under a trackable pseudonym; at Obama's site, I'm "Joe Gauche"; for McCain, "Joe Droit," and at Bob Barr's place, "Joe Liberté".

Mr. Gauche got the text message announcing Obama's pick of Joe Biden early this morning, followed by an e-mail.

Real Clear Politics has been collating the published responses in the major media, and so far I think the New York Post, of all places, has the analysis nailed: Blowhard Could Be Just What Obama Needs.

Biden is, um, articulate to a fault... and he'll make the perfect attack dog, if his performance in the primary debates is any indication. (His one-sentence takedown of Rudy Giuliani -- "He only ever says three things: a noun, a verb, and 9/11" -- was pitch-perfect.)

If the campaign staff can keep Biden anything close to on-message, he'll be very effective.