New York Times article shows why picking Joe Biden was a wise choice

First of all, take a look at the four candidates' favorable vs. unfavorable ratings since September 11:
Obama's have gone up, Biden's gone down a tiny bit, McCain has gone down by a great deal while Palin has plummeted as the shine begins to wear off (so far eerily similar to Canada's Stockwell Day in 2000) and people begin to wonder if the choice was really such a good one in terms of long-term effect and governance. Meanwhile, Joe Biden is beginning to show why he's such a strong candidate in the long term. Some of my favourite parts:

Mr. Biden’s role is red meat serious: to pulverize Mr. McCain, lend foreign policy gravitas to Mr. Obama and be his campaign’s main ambassador to two at-risk constituencies — former supporters of Hillary Clinton and blue-collar Democrats. He speaks to working- class voters in the harsh language of their economic trials and summons easy rage at ear-splitting volumes.

His crowds are up-and-down in number and enthusiasm — some loud and in the thousands, others sleepier and small. But his reviews are generally good from voters, some who came in unconvinced about Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee.

He is a distinctive blend of pit bull and odd duck whose weak filters make him capable of blurting out pretty much anything — “gaffes,” out-of-nowhere comments (pivoting midspeech to say “excuse my back!” to people seated behind him), goofy asides (tapping a reporter’s chest and telling him, “you need to work on your pecs.”)

“That guy I used to know, he’s gone,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. McCain at the campaign event in Maumee, shaking his head. “It literally saddens me,” added Mr. Biden, who tends to used the word “literally” about a dozen times per speech (literally).

The reason why he's been such a good choice compared to Palin is that the only negative press Obama has had to endure as a result of picking him was whether he should have picked Clinton instead, but nothing about Biden himself and whether he's ready to lead the country should anything happen to the president, an argument that simply can't be made with a person as experienced as Biden.