Maybe They Should Put Joe Biden's Picture on a Milk Carton

That may be the only way anyone can find him:

CHICAGO — More than three weeks into the transition, and Vice-President elect Joe Biden generates less buzz than the non-existent first puppy.

The vice president-elect has not spoken publicly since the election, and was at Barack Obama's side just once this week as the president-elect delivered a series of grim news conferences on the economy.

Obama instead appears to be at the center of his longtime Chicago circle.

His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and senior adviser David Axelrod were each at two of Obama's press conferences, and Valerie Jarrett, another senior adviser, joined him during a media-frenzied local lunch stop last Friday. Emanuel and Axelrod have also both already made the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows, where Biden used to be a familiar face.

"I think as the president-elect gets to know the vice president-elect and understands his strengths, he'll rely on him a little more," said Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who has known Biden for 30 years. "Right now you're almost in the campaign mode still and so you really rely on the people who've been around since the beginning."

Biden will be as useful to Obama as training wheels on Air Force One. He'll be a dour looking statue at occasional press conferences, but I think the Obama people learned all too well during the campaign that he's a linguistic hand grenade with an inconsistent fuse. At any moment he can undo a significant amount of Obama's planned message.

We won't see much of Biden until some foreign leader croaks and the U.S. needs a representative at the funeral.