For kicks, my favorite recent Joe Biden line, from an April hearing:
PETRAEUS: Senator, the vice president was in Iraq just a couple weeks after that, and he also had a very warm reception.
BIDEN: Did he get kissed? Get a kiss?
PETRAEUS: I believe he did get kissed when he was there.
BIDEN: I just want to know whether he got kissed, that’s all.
I do have to say that I'm pretty disappointed CNN wasn't forced to report that it found out the veep pick via text message.
P.S. Marc Ambinder has good, immediate-impression thoughts on the Biden pick:
This is a formidable ticket, and a risky ticket, and not a comfort zone choice for Obama. Put aside the obvious: Biden has foreign policy meat on his bones...He's a great debater... he has a working-class Scranton-bred Irish-Catholic heritage...he knows Washington very well...he has known tragedy in his life... Biden premised his presidential candidacy on the notion that Obama was unqualified and not ready from day one. You can expect that the McCain campaign or the RNC will run a national television advertisement featuring Biden's many and various quotations to this effect.
I think that's a little hyperbolic (did he really premise his candidacy on a critique of Obama from the start?), but it's true that this is a quite un-self-indulgent pick, a what-do-circumstances-require pick versus a what-does-Barack-want pick (that would have been somebody like Sebelius).
McCain may now feel pressure to forgo a self-indulgent pick of his own (could any choice be more self-indulgent for him than Joe Lieberman?). If so, that could be good news for Mitt Romney.