While baseball may be America's favorite pastime, especially at World Series time, unsubstantiated political speculation is the number one recreational activity in Washington year-round. One of the most recent topics has been new polling results revealing that Vice President Joseph Biden has a favorability rating of just 42 percent-considerably less than his president and, according to some accounts, less than his predecessor Dick Cheney at a comparable point in the Bush administration.

Analysts and commentators (but mostly commentators-who needs analysis anyway, facts are too complicated) have a variety of explanations for this, generally cut to fit their political preferences. Those sympathetic to Mr. Biden argue that he was not a national figure before the election, that President Obama has given him some of the toughest issues, and that it is not really fair to make any comparisons to Cheney, who at the same point in his first term had benefited from a post-9/11 lift i...