Logobama, Week 25

We enter the 25th installment of “This Week in Logobama.com” with the news that Joe Biden joins the Democratic presidential ticket as the Vice Presidential candidate. I watched some of the news analysis of the VP announcement, as well as saw many tweets about it on Twitter. I am the first to admit that I know very little about Joe Biden, so I’m not commenting on his selection as Obama’s VP. What was interesting, in an expected way, was the response. Analysts who have supported Obama cite Biden as a great choice and a “home run” selection. Conversely, Republican analysts point out the fact that Obama picked Biden because of his foreign policy and armed services credentials, thus supporting Obama’s lack of experience in these fields (stressing that Obama has little experience in these areas, not the VP selection itself).

Obviously you can’t please all of the people all of the time. But thinking about the selection, I wonder who Biden was selected for. I don’t think he was selected for those already strongly supporting Obama; those people are going to vote for him pretty much no matter who he selected as his VP. And Biden obviously wasn’t selected to appease the Republican critics. Biden was selected for those who aren’t sure who to vote for. The strategy must be that he’ll convince more people to vote for Obama/Biden than will switch and vote for McCain/? because of his selection. I also think if Obama had selected someone as his VP who always agrees with his decisions, he’d just be bringing on a “yes man.” Obama bringing on someone who shares his passion and vision, but is confident to disagree when the circumstances warrant disagreement, will result in better decisions through discussion, debate, and thinking instead of just, “yes, I agree” decisions. If David, Todd and I agreed about everything, we’d probably be out of business by now. Instead, we “fight as if you are right; listen as if you are wrong” (from the No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton). And look where that’s gotten us.

Fortunately, the charts don’t argue, and the charts are never wrong.