The man whose presidential ambitions were destroyed when he plagiarised Neil Kinnock is set to become America's chief foreign policymaker if John Kerry is elected President next Tuesday. Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware has been asked by Mr Kerry to become Secretary of State in a Democratic administration, according to Kerry campaign aides. Mr Biden, the leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the past four years, ran for President in 1988. His campaign ended abruptly when it was revealed that a key element of his stump speech had been lifted directly from Mr Kinnock's general election speeches in 1987.
| The air did fizz out rather quickly, didn't it. |
But Mr Biden has since emerged as a leading foreign policy figure in the Democratic party and is expected to take the job offered by Mr Kerry unless political factors intervene. Were the Democrats to retake control of the Senate, he might prefer to remain as a lawmaker, but those who know him think that unlikely. Mr Biden's possible elevation is one of the thousands of permutations circulating in Washington in the final days before the presidential election. If Mr Biden does go to the State Department it will be a disappointment for Richard Holbrooke, the UN Ambassador during the Clinton Administration and the architect of the Dayton peace accords that ended the Bosnian war in 1995. Mr Holbrooke has lobbied hard for the Secretary of State 's job. But in what will be seen as both an effort to conciliate the famously self-confident Mr Holbrooke, and as a signal change from Bush administration policy, Mr Kerry is likely to offer him the job of special Middle East peace co-ordinator, senior Democrats say.
Mr Kerry plans to announce both appointments soon after the election as a sign of the urgency he assigns to mending diplomatic fences. President Bush has declined to appoint a senior level emissary to the Middle East and the Kerry move would delight European leaders, including Tony Blair, who have been urging a renewed US engagement in the region and don't care whether the Paleos ever keep their word. Other senior foreign policy positions in a Kerry administration are likely to go to three former senior officials who have been advising the senator's campaign. Rand Beers, who resigned from the Bush Administration's National Security Council over the Iraq war, is likely to be National Security Adviser, although Wesley Clark, the former Nato commander, may also be considered.
| Both of whom would be awful at that job. |
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