Such was the case last week when Vice President Joseph Biden, standing on a dais in Fairfield next to Senator Christopher Dodd and Fourth District Congressman Jim Himes, looked over to the area where news reporters were herded and said, "I gotta say to the press, this is not a political event."
Officially, Biden was in Connecticut to praise the results of the Recovery Act, $66 million of which is being spent to repave part of the Merritt Parkway, a project that has put about 60 people to work and eventually will employ about 100.
Still, there was no question that both Dodd and Himes may have reaped some (political?) benefit from being seen hob-nobbing with the Vice President of the United States.
Biden called Dodd "my best friend in the Senate."
"I've never seen a time, when in the midst of a crisis, when two of the most critical issues facing the nation landed on one person's plate, as the de facto and actual chairman of two committees [Health and Banking] and third committee, Foreign Relations, where he [Dodd] is the sharpest tool in the kit. I've never seen anybody, Chris, who can handle the pressure like you handle it."
Dodd, running for reelection next year, surely appreciated the praise. He's been the target of a lot of criticism about some alleged sweetheart deals with the very mortgage lenders his Banking Committee is supposed to keep on the straight and narrow, among other matters. His positive poll ratings are below 50 percent, and he is rated among the most vulnerable Democrats in the Senate.
As for Himes, as a one-term Congressman his position is tentative almost by definition. The Fourth District had gone Republican for almost two decades, until Himes, assisted by a huge Democratic turnout in the district's big cities, defeated Chris Shays.
This time around, Himes won't have the advantage of Barack Obama running at the top of the ticket. On the other hand, he may have lucked out a couple of months ago when State Senator John McKinney, the son of the late former Congressman Stew McKinney, decided not to seek his father's old seat.
Thus far, no GOP candidate has staked an undisputed claim to the nomination to run against either Dodd or Himes, and the real political jockeying won't begin until after the first of the year. Nominating conventions for both parties take place in July.
And the election prospects for both Dodd and Himes stand to be enormously affected by what happens with the economy, and with President Obama's health care proposals.
But it certainly isn't too early for Democratic party heaveyweights like Biden to be saying nice things about Dodd and Himes, and that's exactly what he was doing last week.