Interviewee: Joe Biden
Interviewer: Wolf Blitzer and Gloria Borger

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. is the incumbent United States Vice President. Next to Barack Obama, he holds highest precedence within the world’s most powerful nation.

Joseph Biden represented Delaware in the United States Senate for 36 years prior to the vice presidency. Elected at age 29, he was one of the youngest US senators in history.

For 17 years, Joseph Biden was chair, or ranking member, of the senate’s Judiciary Committee. In effect, he had a hand in 20 years’ worth of criminal legislation. He is widely praised for creating the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which brought America’s crime rates to historic lows. In addition, he authored the Violence Against Women Act, which heavily penalizes culprits in cases of domestic violence. The 1996 bill creating a registry of sex offenders nationwide was also his doing.

From 1997 to 2009, Joseph Biden intermittently chaired the Foreign Relations Committee, and as such, affected the nation’s foreign policy profoundly. In 1999, he drafted the resolution sponsoring military intervention in Kosovo’s airspace. This legislation proved crucial to a swift resolution of the war in the Balkans. In the same way, he led Congress in efforts to stop genocide in Sudan. He also hastened the passage of a treaty regulating bio-chemical weapons and prodded NATO into including the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary.

Joseph Biden vaulted to the Senate in 1972, after quashing the reelection bid of Republican J. Caleb Boggs. He has since become one of the Senate’s longest serving Democrats, reelected six times until his resignation to become vice president. On January 20, 2009, he was sworn in as the 47th Vice President of the United States.

Born on November 20, 1942, Joseph Robinette Biden is the eldest child of Joseph and Jean Biden. Originally from Scranton, Pennsylvania, the family eventually relocated to Delaware, where Joseph Biden studied and graduated from.

Joseph Biden secured his bachelor’s degree from the University of Delaware in 1965 and his JD from Syracuse University in 1968. The Delaware bar admitted him the following year.

While running his law firm, Joseph Biden served on the New Castle County Council from 1970 until 1972. Remarkably, he entered the council when he was only 27 years old.

Public service aside, Joseph Biden taught constitutional law for a time at Widener University.