Adhering to his promises for change in the political process, Barack Obama made a revolutionary choice on Saturday when he chose his running mate. He chose a well-seasoned politico from Delaware.

What bravado.

We could call it the audacity of sameness. Other than being a competent civil servant, Sen. Joe Biden has one thing going for him – his middle name isn’t Hussein. This means there is nothing foreign about Biden.

If Obama’s choice is reviewed closely, the reasons for choosing Biden become apparent to the most politically absent-minded. It boils down to some fairly basic campaign logic. A sizable contingent of the American electorate is ignorant, and, sadly, no person can become president without proving they are just one of the guys despite their political record.

A candidate named Barack Obama may be the best person for the job.

However, when they just so happen to be pegged as a non-flag pin wearing elitist, secret Muslim, who is inexperienced, and doesn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance, who is connected to Tony Rezko, a hate-filled preacher who disdains whitey and a ’60s terrorist organization and – oh, he will force you to inflate your tires, chances of that candidate are being elected are low.

Even if most of that information is ridiculously incorrect, a constant barrage coming into people’s inboxes is so hard to keep up with that even Obama’s Web site has a hard time handling it.

These attacks make it difficult for people named Barack Hussein Obama to become president, even if the prevailing political winds are blowing at his back. In our fast-paced world many people simply do not pay attention to the substance of the candidates’ platforms; rather, they only pay attention to the negative.

Living in a political culture where being too smart is one of the cardinal sins for higher office candidates, juvenile attacks on one’s character carry more weight than any specific policy proposals. Therefore, Obama, who should have been able to choose a running mate capable of enhancing his image as a change candidate, had to make a safe choice.

So now we get a 68-year-old man who has been in the Senate since the beginning of Richard Nixon’s second term as president.

How then can he exemplify change with his candidacy? Biden becomes a glaring token of the status quo when you realize that there are only five more people in the Senate who have been there longer than him.

This is not to say that Biden is a bad candidate. If anyone truly deserved to be selected for this position it would be the Delaware Senator. If there’s anyone out there to call out John McCain for being nothing more than a noun verb and POW, given that McCain will unleash that deflective fact to avoid any tricky political question, it would be Biden. In the past, it was Biden who classically derided Rudy Giuliani this primary season as a noun verb and 9/11. Quite simply, Biden embodies politics-as-usual.

Biden will help deflect the barrage of attacks coming from conservative critics who know they cannot win an election based solely on the issues.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter that Obama has a real plan to make the U.S. energy independent, create new jobs, rejuvenate the economy, and help American families. All we’ve heard is McCain’s attack that Obama only wants to inflate your tires. This is why Obama needs Biden.

Biden may not be the personification of change, but he is something important.

He is an injection of politics-as-usual the Obama campaign so desperately needs.