VP Watch

Hunter Biden, one of Delaware Sen. Joe Biden's sons, has left a voicemail on his cell phone directing callers to dial other numbers for "the time being," as speculation about Barack Obama's running mate centers on his father.

One of the two numbers listed is the main number for the Washington lobbying shop where Hunter Biden is a partner and the other goes straight to an unidentified voicemail account (thanks to colleague Catharine Richert for dialing that number).

The outgoing message is hardly confirmation that we will be hearing Obama/Biden for the next two-plus months and perhaps as many as eight years, but all other signs are pointing to a ticket that includes the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

ABC reports a Secret Service detail was assigned to Biden Friday night, which comports with something we heard but could not confirm earlier this week.

AP is reporting that Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh and Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine have been told they will not be on the ticket.

A former high-level Biden aide declined to confirm that it will be the Delaware senator.

"Sorry. Cannot do," the aide said in an e-mail.

CQ VP Watch reported early last month that key Obama surrogates were touting Biden as a possible running mate.

As we have noted in other posts, Biden brings a little for everyone in the Democratic Party to Obama's ticket. He is a foreign policy heavyweight who has good relationships in both parties and around the world.

While he has been more centrist than some of his Democratic colleagues on certain domestic issues -- including opposing partial birth abortion -- he gained the trust of many liberals by leading crusades against conservative Supreme Court nominees such as Robert H. Bork and Clarence Thomas.

Some will say the Democratic ticket looks inverted, with the gravitas at the bottom -- but that arrangement served President Bush pretty well in 2000.

Biden's other son, Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III, is Delaware's attorney general and is due to be deployed to Iraq later this year as a military lawyer with a unit in his state's Army National Guard.

Here's my analysis of Biden's pros and cons from a post earlier this week.