Schieffer: Can Biden Be Obama's Spear Chucker?

Employing the usual liberal assumption that Republicans are always nastier at attack politics, CBS Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer suggested on Sunday morning that Barack Obama has yet to "go negative" in this campaign and "some" say he needs to "climb off the mountaintop and get down here and mix it up."

Did he miss all Obama's talk of Bush-induced "economic disaster" on Saturday? But then Schieffer suggested that Joe Biden's going to have to be Obama's spear chucker – well, "spear guy" – and he might not be able to attack McCain since "they are such close friends."

Did he not hear the "seven kitchen tables" crack in Springfield on Saturday? This talk about timid Democrats came after Schieffer asked his Democrat guests to unload on the controversy over McCain's multiple houses.

Schieffer's guests – Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. – all pounded away at McCain as out of touch on the housing front. But Schieffer was still worried:

Let me ask you all this. There's no question that John McCain has made some inroads going negative. Is Barack Obama going to have to go negative? Some people are saying he needs to kind of climb off the mountaintop here and get down here and mix it up. What do you think, Governor?

Rendell and the others all said it could be done, but Jackson said it must be "poetic and substantive." It's somehow perfect that a Jesse Jackson would demand poetry. Schieffer then shifted to spear analogies:

Is it going to be hard, though, for Joe Biden? Clearly he's going to have to be the spear guy here, he's going to have to be the point man. Is it going to be hard for him to go after John McCain because they are such close friends?

Rendell said no, that Biden would be a "happy warrior."

Then Schieffer briefly chatted with Washington Post political reporter Dan Balz, and he returned to McCain's real-estate riches, and how it might keep him from picking "very wealthy" Mitt Romney:

SCHIEFFER: Do you think this kitchen thing, how many houses that John McCain owns, would that in some way argue against putting another very wealthy person, Romney, on the ticket?

BALZ: Well, we'd be counting a lot of homes if you had a McCain-Romney ticket, there's no question about that. I don't know in the end whether that'll--that will be decisive, but there are little things that happen in a campaign that can affect the internal discussions, and this could be one of them.

Amid all this talk of McCain's houses, CBS offered zero talk of Obama's book-royalty millions, or his mysterious house purchase with convicted political fixer Tony Rezko.