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DENVER

The somebody chosen Saturday by Barack Obama as his running mate was as self-critical as any politician can be

Biden’s campaign was cut short in 1987 when some active since the possible nominee, Michael Dukakis, leaked word to Maureen Dowd of The New York Times that a seemingly autobiographical passage in Biden’s campaign speech had been cribbed word-for-word from British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. While Biden explained that he had usually been careful to attribute the power to Kinnock, the embarrassment was so great that he was forced out of the race.

Four months later, when I sat down by him, Biden was making not any excuses. As I reported, he “acknowledges responsibility for chiefly of the mistakes and misjudgments that led to his early departure from the progeny, observation he was ‘cocky,’ ‘immature’ and ‘naive’ about the demands of a presidential campaign.”

Already the chair of the Judiciary Committee and a senior member of Foreign Relations, Biden said he was coming posterior portion to the Senate determined “to demonstrate the staying power and the seriousness a lot of you (reporters) doubted that I subsist obliged.”

Twenty years later, few of his colleagues in either party would dispute that he has done that. With his Republican partner, Richard Lugar of Indiana, he has rehabilitated the reputation of the Foreign Relations Committee and made it a medium for exceptionally thoughtful examinations of U.S. alien management.

A consistent reviewer of Bush administration policy in Iraq and Pakistan, Biden has had more impact on the thinking of other decision-makers than he ever did on voters at what time he returned to the campaign trail in the manner that a presidential candidate last winter. He did far in the Democratic debates, but with Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards soaking up all the media attention and the votes, there was simply no running room left for Biden.

A month ago, I sat down with him afresh, mainly to perceive by the ear how he and Lugar hoped to revive bipartisan support for the foreign policy of the nearest president

Biden brings a blue-collar sensibility that has been lacking in Obama’s campaign, reflecting his own background in Scranton, Pa., and Wilmington, Del. I apprehend of Democratic governors who fright that Biden’s prolix rhetoric choose go right over the heads of their constituents. But he has worked inflexible at shortening his answers to TV questions.

The message he surely has brought to Obama is: Your background looks elitist to many of the people I represent. The way to overcome that impression is to be in their neighborhoods, talk promptly to them in small groups, and splendor them you in reality understand the struggles in their lives. Biden surely does that.

For a foreign-policy maven who has mingled for years by the leaders of cognate nations, Biden has an unpublicized side in the same manner with an urban politician. His imprint has been heavy on all the anti-crime legislation passed in the past time two decades, and his civil-rights credentials are impeccable.

His personal relationship with McCain is close enough that even in new months, they have been able to talk politics and policy on a basis of mutual trust. But as Biden demonstrated in his first appearance with Obama, he will not be inhibited about taking the Democratic case straight at the Republican ticket.

In picking Biden, Obama has raised the bar for the option McCain will soon make.

davidbroder@washpost.com