Next in line for the presidency?
"Gaffes aside, Joe Biden a power in White House" by Matt Viser | Globe Staff, January 19, 2013
WASHINGTON — He’s the power behind the presidency....
Dick Cheney?
One of the most influential vice presidents in history....
He going to be running the war-games cover during the next 9/11?
In many ways, Vice President Joe Biden is the antithesis of the cool, collected, cerebral Obama. He is instead the glad-handing pol who is not afraid to let loose in public....
He isn’t above a wink and a toothy grin to a pretty girl....
That's harassment.
“He’s old school in the best way,” said Joel K. Goldstein, a professor in St. Louis and an authority on the vice presidency....
But Biden has been able, to a degree, to fill the void, in part because of his long history and his ability to cut deals. Both Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms — two ardent conservative Republicans from South Carolina and North Carolina, respectively — requested in their wills that Biden give a eulogy at their funerals.
But while Obama and Biden have a private lunch nearly every week, and have developed a unique bond, it’s not been without some problems in public....
* * *
Biden will be sworn in on Sunday morning by Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor....
Through much of the nation’s history, the vice president played an inconsequential role. But starting with Walter Mondale, they have grown in stature. The only one who rivals Biden’s influence, according to several historians, is former vice president Dick Cheney.
“Biden is certainly one of the very most powerful vice presidents we’ve ever had,” Goldstein said. “Time and again, Obama seems to involve him as a troubleshooter on the most consequential matters that are facing the administration.”
Still, they have diverged on some policies. Biden disagreed with Obama over the 2009 troop surge in Afghanistan, for example. Biden also has said he advised Obama against authorizing the raid that ended up killed Osama bin Laden.
Why, Joe already know he was dead?
* * *
On Thursday, a group of top donors was invited to a reception at the White House. Obama stood in a small room in the East Wing, a line of people behind him as donors waited to pose for a photo and spend about a minute with the president.
Biden held court in a larger reception room nearby, engaged in a conversation about gun control, state politics, and other topics. To at least one participant, the Biden appearance showed two things: He is far chattier than the president; and he’s paying close attention to a group of donors that he might conceivably one day need.
Biden’s political future as a potential presidential candidate at one level seems far fetched — he would be, on Inauguration Day 2017, 74 years old, by five years the oldest new president ever. But it is nonetheless a frequent topic of conversation, which Biden himself has occasionally stoked.
When the 70-year-old Biden emerged from his polling location in Delaware on Election Day he was asked if it was the last time he would be voting for himself, he said, “Oh, I don’t think so.”
In the meantime, Biden’s verbal gaffes are now portrayed by some as endearing. He asked a man in a wheelchair to stand up and be recognized. He whispered an expletive to Obama without realizing the microphone was on. He said the Obama administration was focused on a “three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S. Jobs.”
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