OH JOE, IT WAS ALWAYS YOU.

CNN, myself, the rest of America and even Obama himself all proclaimed confusion for a while — but you must have known all along, keeping it quiet and secret. A shining, precious ring of a thing, tied up safe and small, a Christmas gift.

There were several other names with foreign policy experience, but you are damn near an expert, they say.

General Wesley Clark? Nah, not popular enough. Senator Jack Reed? Jack who?

And whenever the argument of “experience versus changeâ€Â comes up, well there you’ll be with the experience, and there he’ll be with the change.

Your experience highlights his change; your age, his youth; your approval, then disapproval, of Iraq, his claim that he knew it was a bad idea from the beginning.

It̢۪s a well-known culinary rule: a little salt draws out the flavors of a dish, a function that also allows it to act as a preservative.

You, Joe, are the salt of this campaign. You highlight its strengths and you keep it from spoiling.

Sure, there were the naysayers. Ralph Nader said it would be “dumbâ€Â to choose you over Hillary Clinton, because she would get more votes.

Well we think it̢۪s dumb for Ralph Nader to talk about strategies for winning an election.

But I think you knew better, and ultimately, so did Barack.

Joe — oh Joe, how could we not know? — it had to be you, only you and was always, always, always you, right from the very start.