CANTON, OHIO — Joe Biden is what you would call a close talker. He gets right in your face, almost nose to nose.
This unnerves those with personal-space issues, but that is clearly not the case for hundreds of people who have pushed their way to the rope line outside a pro football shrine to shake the hand of Barack Obama's running mate, passing him folded-up notes, a white cap and ticket stubs to autograph.
"Bring my brother home from Iraq, please," one woman begs. A man in a straw hat takes advantage of the proximity and whispers a long message right in Biden's ear. The Secret Service peels his hands off the candidate's blue blazer.
This is supposed to be the Joe Biden nobody cares about -- the one who had the shortest vice presidential honeymoon in modern memory, crashed by the younger, sharper-tongued phenom Sarah Palin. After the Republican governor made the scene, a fickle press corps deserted the Delaware senator for Alaska. Palin's campaign plane was so full that they had to kick people off, Biden's so empty that reporters had their choice of rows to stretch out and take a nap.
But in recent days something changed. While Biden was on a two-day bus tour of this crucial battleground state last week, Palin's celebrity began to wane, opening an opportunity for the notoriously loquacious senator to play a more significant role in the Democratic campaign after being largely overshadowed.
He was lapping it up like a big, thirsty St. Bernard, bounding from one Main Street stop to the next. He hugged babies, gobbled sugar pie and crashed tables of women drinking coffee at a diner, the fourth derriere stubbornly squeezed onto an orange bench built for three.
His mission is to win over working-class white voters resistant to an Obama candidacy, whether because of race, experience or the mistaken belief that he is a Muslim.
If Obama is seen as an aloof egghead, Biden is the guy from Scranton who takes the train to work, uses words like "helluva" and "malarkey," and endlessly quotes his father -- "Champ, when you fall down, geeet up!"
If Obama is young and untested, Biden is the foreign relations expert who has been in the U.S. Senate for more than half of his 65 years -- under seven presidents -- and knows a lot of world leaders by their first names.
In the traditional role of running mates, Biden plays the attack dog so the top of the ticket needn't stoop to conquer. He portrays the man he calls "my friend John McCain" as a clueless clone of President Bush who insists the economy is strong even on one of its darkest days.
