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The Second-Most Powerful VP Ever

Next in Command

How Biden outdoes everyone except Cheney.

Dick Cheney may have been the most powerful vice president in American history, but could Joe Biden give him a run for his money? A new profile in The New York Times Magazine declares Biden the “second-most powerful vice president in history.” Biden is Obama’s right-hand man on foreign policy. He attends the president’s daily briefing every morning with National Security adviser James Jones, has a weekly one-on-one lunch with Obama, and sits on meetings with top national-security officials. It is also his duty to settle disputes among the so-called team of rivals, so he meets at least once a week with cabinet officers like Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and Jones. Of course, Dick Cheney may have made his job a bit easier: “Biden point out that he benefits from Cheney’s self-aggrandizement: Biden can reduce the scope of the office to something like its historic dimensions and still be the second-most powerful vice president in history.”

Read it at The New York Times Magazine

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