Veep candidate? Amid buzz, Rubio to give foreign policy address at Helms Center

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, shortlisted as a running mate by at least one GOP presidential candidate, will deliver his first major foreign policy speech next month at Wingate University.

Rubio's speech, titled "The Role of America in the World," is part of the Jesse Helms lecture series sponsored by the Jesse Helms Center. It will come on the heels of his first speech off the Senate floor and outside Florida next week at California's Ronald Reagan Presidential.

Rubio, elected last November, was recently mentioned by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as a potential vice presidential candidate along with Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Rubio appeals to Republicans on many levels. He's Hispanic, from Florida and embraced by tea party activists.

“He fits every box you’re looking for when you’re looking for a VP, and then some,” Republican strategist Chip Saltsman told Politico this week. “He’s young, he’s good-looking, he’s smart, he’s done a good job his first (year) in the Senate, he’s energetic, he’s got a great family. He’s the total package in a lot of different ways. Whoever the nominee is, Marco’s gonna be at the top of a very short list.”

Joe, Strom and Jesse

Republicans were quick to attack Barack Obama's choice of Joe Biden as his running mate today, just as Biden jumped into his role of partisan attack dog during a speech in Springfield, Illinois.

But the Delaware senator, after three decades in the Senate, learned to get along with even those Republican colleagues he disagreed with so vehemently, including two from the Carolinas.

In 2003, Biden delivered a eulogy at the Columbia funeral of longtime GOP Sen. and one-time segregationist Strom Thurmond.

"I disagreed deeply with Strom on the issue of civil rights and on many other issues, but I watched him change. We became good friends; I'm not sure exactly how or why it happened. I grew to know him. I learned from him, and I watched him change, oh so subtly.

"Like all of us, he started off as a product of his time. But he understood people; he cared for them. He knew how to read people, how to move them, how to get things done."

Last October, I covered an appearance by Biden in Rock Hill. It was during the senator's own short-lived presidential campaign. When the crowd was gone, he came up to me, the only N.C. reporter there.

"Tell me one thing," he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "How's Jesse?"

Like Thurmond, Jesse Helms was Biden's polar opposite in so many ways. But that didn't stop the two men, colleagues on the foreign relations committee, from sharing a mutual respect.

Last month, Biden was one of a handful of prominent Democrats at Helms' funeral in Raleigh.

Easley sends plane for funeral guest

Former Republican Gov. Jim Martin got a free ride to Jesse Helms' funeral Tuesday -- courtesy of Democratic Gov. Mike Easley.

Easley's office offered Martin a ride aboard the jet the governor often uses on state business. Flight records show the Cessna Citation picked Martin up in Concord in the morning and flew him back after the funeral.

"I was happy to accept that, it saved a couple hours each way," Martin said. "I thought it was a nice gesture."

The two round-trips took less than two hours, according to flight records. The 8-passenger plane costs $770 per hour to operate, according to a spokeswoman for the state Department of Commerce, which owns it. Martin appeared to be the lone passenger.

Easley spokesman Seth Effron said the Democratic governor offered the plane "as a matter of protocol and professional courtesy to the former governor because this was a matter of state.”

Former Gov. Jim Holshouser also attended the funeral, as did other mourners from Charlotte.

Asked how taxpayers might view the trip, Martin said, "If taxpayers would object to that, it probably won't happen again. But I thought it was very thoughtful of (Easley)."

Obama, Helms and symbols

The crowd that came to hear Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama Monday filed into a Charlotte middle school past an American flag flying at half-mast.

The flag was lowered to commemorate Friday's death of North Carolina's longtime U.S. senator, Jesse Helms.

Though plane trouble force Obama to cancel, the irony of the first black presidential nominee scheduling a visit to Helms' home state on the eve of his funeral wasn't lost.

"Sen. Helms represented ... views and perspectives that were wrong-minded, that represented the last century," Jennifer Roberts, chair of the Mecklenburg County commissioners, told the crowd. "We are moving from a politics of division to a politics of unity and the future."

After days of retrospectives about Helms, the Washington Post today re-ran a column that political columnist David Broder wrote about the senator on the occasion of his 2001 retirement announcement.