Sorry, this kind of nepotism is sickening to me, no matter what the party affiliation is.

Quinn: it is really about brand loyalty and name recognition. I am sure Beau Biden will be challenged by MBNA-Chase Master Card III (R-Dover).

I'm with Quinn. It creeps me out to see the nation's highest offices treated like family heirlooms.

If you look for evil you will find it.

No one appointed a Biden to this office. If Beau wants to be senator he will have to run in the democratic primary and then a general election. Could someone please explain where the nepotism is?

The system worked. Joe Biden saw that it would be too politically damaging to appoint Beau.

So Beau will have to go through the same election process as anyone else.

If 1) he isn't qualified and 2) the voters elect him anyway, that is purely the voters' fault. Kind of like a certain current President of the United States.

I'm with Quinn. This reeks.

The intent was there. The expectation that Beau will simply step into his father's shoes is clearly there. Why appoint someone who is prepared to step aside in 2 years just so Beau Biden can take a shot at it? I just find it very distasteful.

Given the long close relationship between Kaufman and the Bidens, I really don't see any substantive difference between the current plan and appointing Beau directly. Kaufman's Senate votes over the next two years are unlikely to be significantly different that what Beau would have done.

Timmeh's son, Biden's son - family businesses.

At least Biden's son has brains.

Excuse me? What "reeks" about this? Beau Biden wasn't appointed; he can run for the job like anyone else and let the voters decide. Are people seriously suggesting that nobody should have the right to run for elective office if a family member previously held the job?

Boy are you naive, Steve. The ONLY reason Beau isn't being immediately appointed is his deployment to Iraq.

Are people seriously suggesting that nobody should have the right to run for elective office if a family member previously held the job?

Given the number of people here that argued against Hillary Clinton in the primaries on exactly that basis, I'd say yes.

To me, its the same error as term limits: mistaking an effect (incumbents serving for extended periods, family members of former officeholders holding office) of certain undesirable political systems (systems of lifetime tenure or inheritance, for instance) for the undesirable feature (the absence of free, regular elections where people chose their representatives) and thus attempting to eliminate those effects even when they are the result of free, regular elections.

That being said, I think there are real issues in our electoral system which, absent controls, predispose it to those effects, and those features are undesirable and distort representation, but it is not extended tenure or the fact that family members sometimes succeed family members that does that, it is the fact that our electoral system often does not present real choices. A better system of voting an election, not arbitrary restrictions on who can hold office, is needed.

I can't see why Joe Biden would resign now. His current term lasts only a few months and then he will be sworn in for his next term.

It seems like he would have to resign twice to effectively get the job done.

Anyone know if this is true, or is there some magic where you only need to be sworn in for your first term?

tomj is right, if Biden resigned now, he would have to resign again after January 6, which makes no sense.

And I'm sorry, other commenters, but this does not reek. Having caretaker interim senators until an election can be held makes perfect sense to me. That way you get a fair election, without the benefit of bogus incumbency. If Beau Biden wins, he wins because voters chose him.

I like Chris Rock's take on the issue: political offices should be like company contest or giveaway programs - if a member of your immediate family is part of the company, you're not eligible to play! That said, previous commenters are correct in that the reason offices get handed down like fiefdoms is that voters are too lazy to think about what they are doing, and just vote for the familiar name. It's not really any diffierent than the 90%+ incumenbent re-election rate.

I am with the no-heirloom crowd. However, there is a simple reason why Biden has not resigned, unlike Obama. Obama's term goes on for two more years. Resigning it makes sense.

Biden's term ends in January any way. He cannot resign a term (2006-2012) he has not started. So, he just wants to complete the current term, and resign the next term as soon as it starts.

Big conspiracy there, mate.

Nepotism in a privately owned company might be OK. For a publicly owned corporation or in government it is not.

A more graceful way to lay it out would have been to say: "The seat will be occupied by the appointment of Edward Kaufman. The seat will be contested at the special election of 2010 and the winner will complete the following 4 years of the term. A.G. Joseph "Beau" Biden III expects to contest for that seat following the completion of his National Guard tour in Iraq."

That's a little more graceful and less presumptive, don't you think? I'm sure that's what Joe meant to say. There's not a great connection between his brain and his mouth.

I'm with the commenters who think this is the right way to go. I think it should be done more often, even when "nepotism" isn't an issue. Governors should especially like it because if they appoint someone who will later go for the full term (and give that person a big edge), they create 10 enemies and one ingrate. Beau Biden may be the heavy favorite in an open contest a few years hence, but he is, after all, the duly-elected Attorney General of Delaware, and AGs are obvious candidates for higher office. It's going to be an issue in my home state, New York. My boss, Andy Cuomo, is one of the people being mentioned to replace Hillary, and the Governor is in a political pickle without an obvious caretaker appointment he can make. (I had earlier sugested that any other Governor but David Paterson could appoint Basil Paterson, David's father, for that role. On further review, what about Mario Cuomo?)