Where's Waldo? Searching For Joe Biden

Where has Joe Biden been?

"...There are, apparently, two Joe Bidens. The public Joe says foolish things he hasn’t thought through, off the cuff (“They’re gonna put y’all back in chains,” he said, of Republicans, in a scary Southern accent to a black audience last fall). He also says foolish things he has thought through, on the cuff (such as when he voted against the first Iraq War but in favor of the second, which he then voted to lose by opposing the surge).

Yet behind closed doors, the vice president is widely acknowledged as a canny operator who knows the Senate, has friends on both sides of the aisle and cuts deals. He brokered the resolutions to the 2011 debt-default crisis and last winter’s fiscal cliff.

He is, in other words, the opposite of President Obama (and Hillary Clinton): He doesn’t cut a dashing figure behind the wheel, but he can get under the hood and fix the transmission..."

"...Actually, Biden does whatever his boss tells him to. He might well be thinking that loyal-lapdog status will earn him Obama’s endorsement in 2016. And the report in Politico that Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the president to keep Biden away from Congress during the shutdown is credible. “None of the deals Biden has struck have aged well from the perspective of the Democratic Caucus,” a Senate Democratic official told Politico.

Which means that, at a notably divisive moment in national politics, the country is being run by Harry Reid. President Obama has silenced the one player on his team with a proven record of working the middle and instead chosen to go for all-out partisan warfare..."

Biden stands in the way of a 'grand liberal project?'