MAKING TOM EAGLETON LOOK LIKE A SAVVY PICK:

Hidin' Biden: Reining In a Voluble No. 2 (Karen Tumulty, 10/29/08, TIME)

Anyone who has watched Joe Biden over 35 years in the Senate might have a little bit of trouble recognizing the guy who is running to be Barack Obama's Vice President. Oh, yes, he looks like the same fellow. But traveling with Biden during this campaign has sometimes been like reporting on a politician packaged in shrink-wrap. While his windy, off-point pontification was the stuff of legend among his Senate colleagues, Biden is now leashed to a teleprompter even when he is talking in a high school gym that is three-quarters empty. The exposure hound who in recent years appeared more often than any other guest on the Sunday talk shows is a virtual stranger to the small band of reporters on his plane — less accessible than even Sarah Palin is to her traveling pack of bloodhounds. And Biden keeps to a schedule that provides a minimum of off-the-cuff encounters with voters, except across a rope line. See Joe Biden's defining moments here.

The campaign's caution is understandable.

While Sarah Palin leads the McCain comeback, Joe Biden is in the witness protection program.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 30, 2008 8:22 AM