Joe Biden is smart and tested, tough and compassionate. He brings the experience Obama needs to round out his resume, especially experience in foreign affairs. Beyond all that, Biden has one more quality on which everyone, on both sides of the aisle, will surely agree: Joe Biden is that rarest of political creatures – he’s a truly decent guy.

You think the Republicans are going to let him get away with that?

Biden’s history is well known. Elected at the age of 29 to the U.S. Senate in 1972, he suffered an unimaginable tragedy when his wife and daughter were killed in a car crash, and his two young sons seriously injured. He almost quit to take care of them, but was eventually talked out of it by Hubert Humphrey. Instead, Biden made the ninety-minute commute back to Delaware from Washington, DC each night to be with them, a practice he continues to this day. He is chairman of the U.S.Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and one of the most influential men in Congress, respected by Republicans as well as Democrats.

But enough of biography and resume. The salient fact, at least for the moment, is that Joe Biden is an archetypical American type: smart but simple and overt in his common sense, honest in substance, direct in style.

The question, then is how are the Republicans going to get him? And have no doubt, dear reader, the Republicans are going to go after him. (No partisanship in this case - the Democrats will return the favor soon enough.)

Not that this applies   Republicans: Senator Richard Luger said, “I congratulate Senator Barack Obama on his selection of my friend. I have enjoyed for many years the opportunity to work with Joe Biden to bring strong bipartisan support for United States foreign policy.”

Nonetheless, the Republican attack machine is surely searching through every trash can, listening to every ugly rumor, giving audience to every snitch, it can find. Now Biden isn’t perfect, thank God, because perfection is otherwordly, and Lord knows we need somebody firmly rooted in the here-and-now to figure out how to contend with the economy and the Russians and the Middle East, on and on. Still, it be interesting to see what dirt they’re going to fling at him.  We've certainly seen all kinds during this campaign, significant to ridiculous, perhaps highlighted by Obama’s secret Muslim allegiance – which, it goes without saying though in an election year it behooves you to say it, is nonsense.

We seem to be running low on good dirt lately, as evidenced by the media’s focus on whether Cindy McCain has accorded her half-sisters their proper due in the story of her life.

So let the right-wing treatment of Joe Biden stand as an informal litmus test to determine just how far our politics and media have fallen. He is a good man, who has spent a lifetime earning the respect and affection of his peers and fellow citizens. Let’s how far they go in destroying that in the name of the greater good.