The Veep Chessboard, Seven Moves Ahead

Operating under the assumption (and it is an assumption only at this point) that Obama will select Joe Biden, the BooMan takes a look at what moves open up on the board by moving the Delaware Senator to the Veep slot:

It starts with moving Biden into the Naval Observatory, opening up the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations committee. As Al points out, the chair would naturally fall to Chris Dodd. But, by appointing Dodd (who is retiring in 2011 anyway) to head the State Department, the Foreign Relations chair would fall to John Kerry. In this situation, the three top members of the committee would be dispersed to where Obama could use them to maximum advantage. Biden would be VP and have a seat on the National Security Council with Secretary of State Dodd. Kerry would head up the international relations effort in the Senate.

It's a pretty fascinating read, but the short version is Biden to Veep, Dodd to SecState, Kerry to Foreign Relations as BooMan says, and from there, Tim Johnson (or if his health fails) Jack Reed to Banking, Housing and Human Affairs, Tom Daschle to WH Chief of Staff, Mary Landrieu gets Kerry's slot on Small Business, and Joe's son Beau Biden gets appointed to Joe Biden's seat. (whew!)

Now while all that is fine and dandy, Biden has this terrible habit of making things worse when he opens his mouth. Getting him OFF Foreign Relations might not be a bad idea, considering that's going to be a crucial part of the next four years, and letting Dodd be Good Cop to Biden's Bad Cop isn't a terrible idea...then again, that kinda smacks of Bush and Condi and Nameless One.

I personally think Bill Richardson would make a better Sec State than Dodd, but that's just me. Hillary would naturally stay in the Senate in order to make a run later on -- she wouldn't take a seat in the Obama Administration to save her life -- and become the "maverick" criticizing Obama to prepare the way for down the road.

Could Obama tap Gore for a spot? UN Ambassador maybe? Climate Czar? Wes Clark as SecDef maybe? Who knows. But the Biden Shuffle does open up a lot of possibilities.