David Pleasant

While President Obama fights the Blue Dogs and Republicans in Congress over health care, Vice President Joe Biden waxes-poetic about the women in Kiev with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko at a pub in the Ukraine.

“I cannot believe that a Frenchman visiting Kiev went back home and told his colleagues he discovered something and didn’t say he discovered the most beautiful women in the world,” Biden quipped to Yushchenko, according to a pool report. “That’s my observation.”

“It’s certain you have so many beautiful women,” Biden added.

I suppose it’s better to have Biden out of the country being loquacious over the women of Kiev than to have him back in the States making gaffes about the economy.

Politico reports the end of the Darth Vader era.

Joe Biden is laying plans to significantly shrink the role of the vice presidency in Barack Obama’s White House, according to an official familiar with his thinking.

It’s not just that Biden won’t sit in on Senate Democrats’ weekly caucus meetings – a privilege Republicans afforded outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney. He won’t have an office outside the House floor, as House Speaker Dennis Hastert gave Cheney early on.

Biden will not begin every day with his own intelligence briefing before sitting in on the president’s. He will not always be the last person Obama speaks to before making a decision.

He also will not, as a transition official calls it, operate a “shadow government” within an Obama administration.

[snip]

In short, Biden will be no Dick Cheney – who redefined the office of the vice presidency to gather unto himself unprecedented influence and reach. Instead, Biden will serve the role of trusted backup, but someone who won’t be mistaken for a co-president single-handedly crafting and promoting policy.