Biden makes the papers

by James Oliphant

You’re Joe Biden, you’re running for president, and you have a problem. By and large, when the national press covers you, they do so sparingly, largely as a backdrop to bickering between Hillary Clinton and John Edwards and Barack Obama.

So what do you do? You take advantage of the Senate’s bully pulpit and get yourself some free media. Biden was featured on the op-ed pages of Baltimore Sun and the Philadelphia Inquirer today. In the Sun op-ed piece , Biden calls on the administration to take a new approach in dealing with Pakistan, mentioning along the way that he has recently spoken both to Gen. Pervez Musharraf and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. (Biden chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.)

In the Inquirer, Biden shares a byline with fellow Judiciary Committee member Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). The senators have co-sponsored a bill aimed at easing the transition from prison back into society. The legislation provides states and nonprofit prisoner-reentry organizations funding to help ex-offenders get job training, education, literacy training, substance-abuse treatment, counseling, housing and mentoring services.

Now if Biden could just land somewhere really important, say in the pages of the Des Moines Register.