World in News

Obama chooses Biden as running mate

WASHINGTON - Delaware Senator Joe Biden is Barack Obama's choice to be his vice presidential running mate, NBC News has confirmed.

Biden, who has served in the Senate since being elected at the age of 29, is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and will add his foreign policy expertise to the Democratic ticket.
In recent years, he has traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan two times and to Iraq eight times. He returned Monday from a fact-finding trip to Georgia.
At age 65, the Delaware senator is nearly 20 years older than Obama.
He has endured tragedy and near death: Five weeks after he won his Senate seat in 1972, his wife and infant daughter were killed in a car accident.
And in 1988, he suffered a brain aneurysm and nearly died.
Biden’s voting record is in line with many Senate Democrats: He voted in 2003 to authorize President Bush to use military force in Iraq, and he also voted against the Bush tax cuts and against Republican Supreme Court nominees William Rehnquist, Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito.
He has run twice for the Democratic presidential nomination, once in 1988 and again this year.
He was forced to exit the 1988 race after he was caught having borrowed portions of a speech by British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock — without giving him credit.
In 1987, as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden managed the Senate’s rejection of Bork, a conservative Supreme Court nominee by Ronald Reagan.
But some Democrats still blame Biden for allowing Thomas to win confirmation to the high court in 1991.