*Obama Picks Biden as Running Mate**

Biden Is Obama's Pick for VP
*Six-Term Senator From Delaware Will Be Introduced Today in Illinois*

*Obama Picks Biden as Running Mate**

CHICAGO, Aug. 22 -- Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), a two-time
presidential candidate who has collected substantial foreign policy
credentials in his three decades in the Senate, will be announced Saturday
morning as Sen. Barack Obama's running mate, a Democratic source said Friday
night.

The announcement of a running mate will come in a text message, Obama's
campaign said. The presumptive Democratic nominee is then scheduled to
introduce Biden Saturday afternoon at a rally in Springfield, Ill.

The word of Biden's selection came after Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and
Sen. Evan Bayh (Ind.) told supporters on Friday that they were not the pick,
sources said. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) also was ruled out, an
official close to Clinton said.

Planning meetings at Obama's Chicago headquarters have increasingly focused
on Biden, sources said, and according to Democrats close to Kaine, Obama
(Ill.) told the Virginia governor that Biden was his choice. One source
close to the presumptive nominee had cautioned, though, "We may surprise you
yet."

ABC News reported late Friday that the Secret Service had dispatched a
protective detail to assume Biden's immediate protection, a further
indication that Obama was looking Biden's way. Biden stayed out of public
sight all day.

Obama himself acknowledged that he had made up his mind days ago, but the
closely held information remained secret going into the weekend. None of the
leading contenders were willing Friday to discuss publicly their talks with
Obama.

"It really is amazing," marveled Thomas A. Daschle, the former Senate
majority leader and a close Obama confidant. Daschle said even many senior
Obama advisers had not been informed as of Friday morning -- and that he
himself was still in the dark.

Obama called Kaine on Friday to tell him he would not be the choice, two
sources close to the governor said.

"I guess we are not surprised, but we wouldn't have been surprised the other
way," said Jinks Holton, Kaine's mother-in-law.

News crews staked out the homes of those believed to be on the short list,
including Biden, Kaine, Bayh and even Rep. Chet Edwards (Tex.), a
conservative Democrat and latecomer to the guessing game.

In Kansas, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius declined to say whether she had heard from
Obama recently, saying it will be "exciting news" when the choice is made
public.

Convention planners released a schedule of events showing that Sebelius will
hold a kickoff press briefing Sunday morning in Denver, not exactly the kind
of activity a vice presidential candidate would be expected to participate
in.

Speculation also swirled around Clinton as one of her supporters said that
she had not been officially vetted by the Obama campaign, despite Obama's
repeated statements that she "would be on anybody's short list." Clinton was
informed at the highest levels that she had not made the cut, sources said.

Clinton was not asked for the paperwork associated with being vetted and did
not interview for the job; senior Obama advisers countered that she had been
vetted in public over the course of the campaign and her decades in
political life. But Obama advisers also have made no secret of their
reluctance to consider Clinton all along.

On a day in which speculation about Obama's choice reached a fever pitch,
reporters culled every source for news of the pick, even tracing the tail
numbers on private planes scheduled to head from the home states of some of
the contenders to Chicago on Saturday morning. A Kansas City television
station reported that "Obama-Bayh '08" stickers were being mass-produced at
a local factory. The scheduled appearances on Sunday's morning talk shows
offered other potential clues: Kaine is slotted to appear on "Fox News
Sunday." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the top booster of the idea of adding
Edwards to the ticket, will appear on "Meet the Press."

Biden, 65, has served 36 years in the Senate and chairs the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, on which Obama also sits, and has been a longtime
chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He also has shown on numerous
occasions a difficulty in maintaining the kind of message discipline at
which Obama has excelled.

Perhaps the most notable example of that came in January 2007, when Biden
announced his second candidacy for president. Rather than spending the day
boasting of his qualifications, Biden spent much of it extricating himself
from remarks he made about Obama, having called him "the first mainstream
African American [presidential candidate] who is articulate and bright and
clean and a nice-looking guy."

Meanwhile, at home in Arizona, Sen. John McCain (R) predicted that the
Democratic convention will produce a huge bump for his rival, part of an
ongoing effort to raise expectations for Obama's historic nomination.

In a memo from one of its top strategists, McCain's campaign predicted that
"Obama will see a significant bump, and believe it is reasonable to expect
nearly a 15-point bounce out of a convention in this political environment."

McCain's campaign is trying to raise expectations to a point Obama can't
possibly reach. But the memo gave some backing for the idea of a big Obama
bump, citing a 16-point bump that Bill Clinton got after his 1992 convention
and a 10-point bump for Jimmy Carter in 1976.

On CBS's "Early Show," Obama said this about his pick: "Obviously, the most
important question is, is this person prepared to be president?
Second-most-important question, from my perspective, is: Can this person
help me govern? Are they going to be an effective partner in creating the
kind of economic opportunity here at home and guiding us through some
dangerous waters internationally? And the third criteria for me, I think,
was independence. I want somebody who is going to be able to challenge my
thinking and not simply be a yes-person when it comes to policymaking."

*Kumar reported from Richmond. Staff writers Dan Balz, in Denver, and Tim
Craig, in Richmond, contributed to this report.*