Joe Biden apparently got turned away the other night from a sold-out theater where he and his spouse wanted to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. According to this account, he was told there were no seats so he left, and only the theater staff realized who it was. Other moviegoers either didn't recognize him or didn't care.
Now, there are a couple of ways to look at this. Back in the pre-Cheney days, there were a lot of jokes about how there was no one in Washington more ignored than the guy who was a heartbreak away from the Presidency. Walter Mondale used to joke about how utterly unnoticed he was in the role. So we may be back into that. You could interpret the incident as indicative of how people don't care about Biden…or like him enough to demand autographs. Or you could commend the guy for not making a fuss and reminding someone that he was that state's Senator and is about to become Veep so they'd damn well better find him a couple of seats. Do we think Dick Cheney would have left quietly?
It might mean all of this or none of this. It also might not have been Joe Biden. It would be comforting though for me to think we were heading back to the era of the Invisible Veep. I want a Vice-President who doesn't do anything, doesn't get noticed, isn't seen as a secret power broker, doesn't shoot anyone in the face and just sits around fulfilling his one true Constitutional duty: Waiting for a foreign leader to die.