Obama introduces running mate Biden

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Barack Obama introduced Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware on Saturday as a man "ready to step in and be president," and the newly minted running mate quickly turned his campaign debut into a slashing attack on Republicans seeking four more years in the White House.

Sen. John McCain will have to "figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at" when considering his own economic future, said Biden, jabbing at the man he called his personal friend.

It was a reference to McCain's recent inartful admission — in a time of economic uncertainty — that he was not sure how many homes he owns.

Before a vast crowd spilling out from the front of the Old State Capitol, Obama said Biden was "what many others pretend to be — a statesman with sound judgment who doesn't have to hide behind bluster to keep America strong."

Democrats coalesced quickly around the 47-year-old Obama's selection of the veteran of three decades in the Senate — a choice meant to provide foreign policy heft to the party's ticket for the fall campaign against McCain and the Republicans.

Biden emerged as Obama's choice after a secretive selection process that included at least a half-dozen contenders — but evidently not Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former first lady who was Obama's tenacious rival across the primaries and caucuses of winter and spring.

Obama made a symbolic choice for the site of the ticket's first joint appearance.

It was a brutally cold winter day more than a year ago when he stood outside the historic structure in the Illinois capital to launch his quest for the White House.

He returned this day in sunshine, the party's improbable nominee-in-waiting, a black man in his first Senate term who outdistanced a crowded field of far better-known and more experienced rivals for the nomination.

The Democratic National Convention opens on Monday to nominate him as president and Biden as vice president, the ticket that Democrats hope to ride into the White House after eight years of Republican rule.

McCain's convention opens on Labor Day. He has yet to select a running mate.

Polls indicate a highly competitive race at the end of a summer in which McCain eroded what had been Obama's slender advantage in the national surveys.

Responding to Obama's pick, the McCain campaign wasted no time trying to turn the selection to its own purposes.

It quickly produced a television ad featuring Biden's previous praise for McCain and comments critical of Obama. In an ABC interview last year, Biden had said he stood by an earlier statement that Obama wasn't yet ready to be president and "the presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training."

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