Enlarge By Scott Olson, Getty Images Running mates Barack Obama and Joe Biden pose for a picture as they greet people Saturday gathered for a rally on the lawn of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill. THE BIDEN FILE THE BIDEN FILE Age: 65. Born Nov. 11, 1942, in Scranton, Pa. Education: University of Delaware, B.A.; Syracuse Law School Profession: Lawyer, U.S. senator Elected offices: New Castle (Del.) County Council, 1970-1972; U.S. Senate, 1973-present Politics: Unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate in 1988 and 2008 Senate committees: Foreign Relations, chairman; Judiciary, third-ranking Democrat Family: Wife, Jill; three adult children, Beau, Hunter and Ashley; five grandchildren. His first wife, Neilia, and young daughter Naomi Christina were killed in a car accident shortly after Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972. Quote: "These times require more than a good soldier. They require a wise leader. A leader . . . who can deliver." — Saturday in Springfield, Ill. Sources: Almanac of American Politics and Biden's Senate office. BIDEN PROFILE BIDEN PROFILE Senator joins Dem ticket: Obama taps Biden as vice presidential running mate Analysis: Biden bolsters Dem ticket on foreign policy, national security A blunt inquisitor: Foreign affairs is senator's specialty Biden's gaffes: Slips of the tongue have landed senator in hot water More on Biden: Complete coverage from the 'Delaware News Journal' DENVER  Maybe you didn't know that Joe Biden stuttered as a kid, takes a 91-minute train ride home to his wife each night and is so well known in a must-win swing state he's been called "Pennsylvania's third senator." Barack Obama tapped as his running mate a man whose dramatic life story rivals his own, and holds political appeal far beyond the foreign-policy expertise that is Biden's most obvious asset. The Delaware senator balances this ticket in many other ways. With his working-class background, Biden could help Obama fight his portrayal as a candidate of the elites, and win over the women voters who passionately supported Hillary Rodham Clinton. He's 65 years old to Obama's 47, Catholic to Obama's Protestant. Unlike Obama, he didn't attend Ivy League schools. POLL: Biden well-liked, but unknown to many While Obama has frustrated some Democrats by being slow to attack, Biden is blunt and eager to wage political combat — qualities that could allow Obama to remain above the fray. Biden, who overcame his stutter as a boy by relentless drills, is a gifted if sometimes windy speaker who goes for the gut. "He's comfortable on the attack and that will serve the ticket well," says Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala. Biden also stays close to his roots — in his visits to his hometown of Scranton, Pa., in the laws he works to pass and in the allies he's made in Delaware politics. When he returned last week from a trip to the embattled Republic of Georgia, for instance, he headed straight from the airport to a promised appearance at a firefighters hall. In choosing Biden, Obama essentially is calculating that the Delaware senator's penchant for occasional gaffes won't be a distraction in the fall campaign. Biden was driven from the 1988 presidential race for failing to credit a British politician for a passage Biden used in a stump speech. Biden has been lambasted more recently for clumsily praising Obama as "clean" and "articulate" and saying that in Delaware "you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent." Hours after Obama made his pick, Republicans launched a "Biden gaffe clock." The same brain-to-mouth quickness that sometimes misfires, on the other hand, produced possibly the most memorable and cutting line of the primary season: Biden's contention that every sentence uttered by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani — at the time a candidate for the GOP nomination — was "a noun, a verb and 9/11." Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, another Democrat whose bluntness sometimes gets him in trouble, cast Biden's misfires as endearing. "It's pretty easy to fall in love with Joe Biden," he told USA TODAY Sunday. "Even his mistakes, you have a tendency to shake your head and say, 'But that's Joe.' " Another potential downside of Obama's pick is one of the reasons he made it: the weight of Biden's experience. It's reassuring to wavering voters worried about Obama's short national resume. But it could undercut Obama's message of change. Republicans have seized on that line of attack. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican often mentioned as a possible running mate for John McCain, on Sunday called Biden a "consummate insider" who was elected to the Senate when he and Obama were 11. "And he's known as being long-winded on top of that," Pawlenty added on a Republican party conference call. "Where's the change?" But Obama concluded the benefits outweigh the risks. "Mostly, I think what attracted Sen. Obama was Biden's wisdom," senior strategist David Axelrod said on ABC's This Week. "And not the kind of wisdom you get in Washington, D.C., but the kind of wisdom you get when you overcome adversity, tragedy in your life as he has; the kind of wisdom you get in the working-class communities of Scranton, Pa., and Wilmington, Del." Tragedy struck early for Biden. Shortly after he was elected to the Senate at age 29, his wife and young daughter were killed in a car crash as they shopped for a Christmas tree; his two young sons were badly injured. In an emotional speech to the International Association of Fire Fighters last year, a shirt-sleeved Biden described his debt to his local firefighters. "My firefighters saved my children," he said. In 1988, Biden had a life-threatening aneurysm and local firefighters again raced to the rescue. "I would not have lived" but for them, he told the group. "We owe you big," he said. "You took care of me in the worst time of my life." Biden was persuaded to take office as planned in January 1973 and, with his sister helping him look after his sons during the day, commuted home to see his recovering little boys every night. That set a pattern that has continued throughout his second marriage to Jill Jacobs in 1977. The older of his two sons, Beau, 39, says that makes Joe Biden an outside-the Beltway candidate. He became an Amtrak regular for more than three decades so he could "be home at my ballgames and be at the dinner table," Beau Biden told USA TODAY last year. Appeal to women While Obama leads McCain 48%-42% among women in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll released Sunday, Biden's family life and his legislative record on women's issues could help win disappointed fans of Hillary Rodham Clinton and enlarge that gender gap. Working Mother magazine said Sunday that Biden is one of 24 lawmakers on its "2008 Best of Congress" list. "He puts kids' health, safety and education at the top of his priorities list," the magazine said. It said he has worked recently on a bill to reduce class size and "along with his wife, Jill, Biden has been a longtime leader in the fight against breast cancer." Biden supports abortion rights and, as a senior member and former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has helped block anti-abortion jurists. Emily's List president Ellen Malcolm, whose group supports female abortion-rights candidates, called Biden "a passionate advocate for women" whose "commitment to family will resonate with women voters across this country." When Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991, some feminists alleged that he was too easy on Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and too hard on Anita Hill, a former co-worker of Thomas' who had accused the federal judge of sexual harassment. Three years later, however, Biden was praised by many feminists for what he calls one of his proudest accomplishments: writing the 1994 Violence Against Women Act. Joseph Pika, a political scientist at the University of Delaware, says Biden was at least in part making amends. "He very self-consciously tried to shore up his support from women voters after the Anita Hill episode," he says. Now, he says, Biden's "respectful" treatment of Clinton could help Obama with Clinton supporters who have been reluctant to come on board. Republicans, however, are doing what they can to stoke lingering resentments. McCain has released a TV ad called "Passed Over," lamenting that Clinton was not chosen as Obama's running mate. Giuliani, speaking on ABC's This Week, said Clinton should have been "a no-brainer" for Obama. It's unclear how many Clinton supporters remain offended. One prominent Clinton ally, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, 42, switched to Obama right after the primaries and is even more enthusiastic now that Biden is on the ticket. She says she has been "an admirer of him for forever, gaffes and all," since her college days as a member of Students for Biden. "I had the button on my backpack and the whole deal." Working class background When Biden was named, Obama's Pennsylvania office put out a release headlined "Obama selects Pennsylvania's third senator." Delaware, south of Pennsylvania, is in the Philadelphia media market. "People know him big time, and everything he does is reported by Philadelphia television," Rendell says. What's more, Pennsylvania had Republican senators for 26 of the 30 years between 1977 and 2007 — prompting some elected Democrats to turn to Biden for help. "He really handled Pennsylvania for us," says Rep. Paul Kanjorski, who represents the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre areas. The strongest tie is Biden's abiding affection for Scranton, where he lived until he was 10. In the northeast corner of the state, Scranton is in the middle of swing-voter territory, home to working-class Catholic voters who in the Democratic primaries went solidly for Clinton. Biden often invokes his blue-collar background with tales of his childhood playmates and uncles talking politics around the kitchen table, and he visits Scranton every year. Last year, he took his 91-year-old mother, Jean Finnegan, to visit the house where the family once lived. "Scranton never leaves you; it's in your blood," Biden said in an interview published Sunday by the Scranton Times-Tribune. " I don't know, maybe I have a little romanticized view because I love the place so much." He said his mother, who lives with him, kissed him as he left for Springfield, Ill., to be introduced as Obama's running mate. "Joey, everybody in Scranton'll be so proud," she told him. The new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows Obama leading McCain 52%-36% among registered voters making less than $50,000 a year. But Biden could help him solidify his standing in crucial states where he lost working-class voters badly to Clinton. In northeastern Pennsylvania, Obama lost to Clinton 3 to 1. Kanjorski, who backed Clinton, says he has been worried about "stabilizing" his region for Obama. "Joe Biden goes 1,000 miles in that direction," he says. "He's a favorite son." The Obama campaign is betting that Biden's blue-collar appeal will extend throughout the Rust Belt, and some political analysts agree. Alexander Lamis, a political scientist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, says lower-income white voters will determine the election in those states. "Biden helps," he says. "He's plain-spoken and down-to-earth and will resonate in working-class areas." Student of the world As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden eases the minds of people who want seasoning along with change. Pawlenty, in talking points also pressed by Giuliani and on a new GOP website called NotReady08.com, said Biden's resume amounts to "overcompensation" for Obama's "lack of readiness" to be president. "It's not a situation where you should have to have a mentor or a trainer or a superviser," he said. Biden himself had cited Obama's inexperience during the primary campaign, but made light of that in his interview with the Scranton newspaper. "Guess what, he got experienced real quick," Biden joked, then added: "I was running against him, man. What did they expect me to do, lean over and hug him and say, 'Yeah, he was the most experienced? He has plenty of experience?' Hey, man, the only thing I had going was experience." One state where his experience could make a difference is Florida, with its large contingent of Jewish voters. Obama has rattled some Jewish voters because he is open to high-level dipomacy with Iran and because last year he told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people." Wasserman Schultz, who represents the Fort Lauderdale area, says Biden is viewed as a strong supporter of Israel and his presence on the ticket will "go a long way to winning over" Jewish voters. She says she's already been told Biden will campaign in Florida: "He has worked the condos. I have worked the condos with Joe Biden before in my district. People will be excited and fired up." If the choice of Biden works the way Obama hopes, winning the White House would raise a question that Biden himself has brought up: Can he can adapt to working for someone else? Biden has been his own boss since he won an unexpected Senate victory in 1972. He has run his Senate office, the Senate Judiciary Committee and, now the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has been set back on his heels personally and politically, but it hasn't broken his faith in himself and his talents. "One of the hardest things for Joe Biden, should they win, will be to stand silently by the President. Vice presidents are seen but not heard," Pika says. "Verbal problems are probably controllable: He'll stay on message. (But) I think playing second fiddle is going to be tough for him." Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. 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