I'd like to thank you for the warm welcome I've received as the newest member of this campaign.
What you and Barack have accomplished over the past 19 months is incredible, and it's an honor to be part of it. I'm looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and getting involved.
I recorded a short video message about how I hope to help in the weeks ahead.
Please take a minute to watch the video and share it with your friends:
Over the next few weeks, I'll be doing a lot of the things you've done to grow this movement -- reaching out day after day in neighborhoods all across the country, connecting with people who are hungry for the change we need.
This is no ordinary time, and this is no ordinary election. I plan to do everything I can to help Barack take back the White House.
I don't need to tell you that John McCain will just bring us another four years of the same. You can't change America when you supported George Bush's policies 95% of the time.
Barack has the vision and the courage to bring real change to Washington. But even he can't do this alone.
Join me by getting involved in your community -- and reach out to your friends and family to get them involved as well.
Please watch this video and pass it on:
http://my.barackobama.com/bidenvideo
Thank you,
Joe
Barack Obama, more than most presidential candidates, has had a life rich with transforming experiences. Few have been as important as writing his first book, "Dreams From My Father."
The book, written before he was a politician, is a raw, searching and candid portrait of the contradictions and conflicts of his first unusual 30 years.
"It was a struggle to look honestly into his period of rebelliousness, growing up biracial, and the hurt of being abandoned by his father," recalls his close friend, Valerie Jarrett. "It was at times a painful exercise, but it was a catharsis. By the end, he was whole."
The self-discoveries emanating from the book offer reassurance that Obama is a secure, self-confident man.
This is in contrast to the two most recent presidents of the United States: George W. Bush, who gives off an air of cocky self-confidence, wasn't sufficiently secure to consult skeptics, including his own father, when he made a fatal decision to go to war; Bill Clinton's unrivaled intelligence and political acumen weren't sufficient to deter his bouts of personal recklessness.
Obama has personal issues - as the most prominent black politician in American history, race is always there. And there's a tinge of arrogance, or more accurately, self-righteousness. Still, as Jarrett suggests, he is "whole."
This doesn't tell us what kind of president he would be or which policies he would pursue or even how he would respond in a crisis. But character is destiny. There have been American leaders with lots of it who have failed; there has never been a president without character who succeeded.
Intellectually, Obama is truly gifted. "He's at least as smart as Bill Clinton," said Abner Mikva, who was White House counsel during the Clinton administration and has known Obama for two decades.
Mikva, while a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, offered Obama a clerkship, a sure path to a similar and highly coveted post at the Supreme Court. Obama turned him down. The Harvard Law School graduate told the judge he wanted to enter politics in Chicago. Mikva, a former congressman from Chicago, marveled at his "naïveté."
There is one powerful trait in Obama, Mikva says, that Clinton lacked: "tremendous self-discipline." Campaigns are usually reflections of the candidates, and rarely has America seen one as disciplined as this historic adventure.
The Democratic nominee has well-honed liberal instincts, especially on issues of social equality; he genuinely disdains what he considers the "social Darwinism" of many Republican policies on taxes, health care and spending priorities.
Yet Obama is no ideologue and invariably has disappointed left-wingers in the Illinois State Legislature and the U.S. Senate, and during his time as a candidate. At every juncture of his career, he has found some common cause with philosophical opposites.
He is also opportunistic. As a Senate candidate in 2004, the longtime gun-control advocate supported a measure allowing retired police officers to carry concealed weapons. Subsequently, he won an important endorsement from the Fraternal Order of Police. That's a good trade-off for any politician.
Occasionally, the expediency is less attractive. When he got to be a big national figure and lucrative offers came in for a second book, he ditched the agent who was with him when he was a nobody during the writing of his first, and much better, book.
Sometimes it's complicated. Obama's protectionist rhetoric in the primaries may have been necessary to fend off Hillary Clinton, who started the trade-bashing. He isn't a protectionist, and this stuff may come back to haunt him if he wins.
He is both a very cautious and remarkably bold politician. Running for a Senate seat several years after getting clobbered in a House primary was gutsy. So was going against conventional wisdom and taking on the Clinton political machine.
If Obama loses this election, however, one reason may be his inexplicable rejection of a series of proposed debates or forums with his Republican adversary, John McCain. He bowed to the conventional wisdom that he was ahead, so why take the risk? He may live to regret that decision.
The biggest worry about an Obama presidency is the flip side of his self-confidence, his occasional lapses into hubris. This is most worrisome on foreign policy, not because of his inexperience, but because he seems so supremely self-confident about his instincts.
The Obama campaign reflects unsteadiness on overseas issues at critical moments. When Russia invaded Georgia a few weeks ago, his initial comments were vapid; throughout the day he had to toughen his posture.
Yet Obama's entire history and the discoveries he made in writing his first book suggest he'll be comfortable around strong people with diverse views. His biracial background and eclectic experiences all attest to that.
More than any leader, perhaps since Franklin Roosevelt, he appears more likely to emulate Abraham Lincoln's "team of rivals," the phrase coined by the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin to describe the 16th president's ability to surround himself with forceful, independent minded advisers.
Hillary Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn, in private e-mails published in the latest edition of Atlantic Monthly, charges that Obama is "not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values." That merely reinforces how petty the discredited Penn is.
Thomas Jefferson, if he could shed his racial hang-ups, today would find the Obama story the essence of the America he envisioned.
Obama would assume the presidency with an appreciation of the force of the office. In early May, several of his closest friends joined the campaign in Indiana during that state's important primary. As the candidate campaigned, they privately argued over what they would call him in personal moments if he were elected.
Obama later joined them and asked what they had been debating. Told, he quickly replied: "You will call me Mr. President."
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