The Foreign Policy-Pro: Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. is a 35-year legislative veteran, a widely respected foreign-policy expert, a likable man with one of the most gripping biographies in American politics.

Not a bad formula for a presidential campaign.

Yet, Biden has failed to excite voters, and is polling steadily in the mid-single digits with little time before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. Nonetheless, he is campaigning at full speed, barnstorming the countryside to build support among rural Democrats.

These are the most practical and cautious of caucusgoers, the type who appreciate Biden's six terms in the Senate and his absorbing tutorials on Social Security and OPEC, who have hours of an afternoon to catch up on Pakistani politics with the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Charismatic and blunt, the 65-year-old is a gifted retail politician. Voters tend to show up at Biden events in a curious mood and leave in full swoon. Indeed, advisers to some of Biden's better-performing Democratic competitors believe that if the Delaware senator had real money and a serious organization in Iowa, he could pose an actual threat.

Instead, the money is not there, and time is running short. Biden launched a new Iowa TV ad campaign last week highlighting his foreign policy experience, which could help. His campaign is hopeful that with about half of Iowa Democrats still shopping candidates, Biden could catch on late and capture third place.

"One of us is going to end up supplanting one of the so-called top-tier candidates, I think, if you take a look, you give us each sort of our day, our time in the barrel to see if we rise up," Biden predicted recently in an Iowa Public Television interview.

Biden's 2008 bid is his second try for the Democratic nomination. He also ran for president in 1988, a bright young political star with a tragic history -- Biden's first wife, Neilia, and baby daughter were killed in a car accident five weeks after his upset Senate victory in November 1972. In the fall of 1987, Biden was starting to catch fire in Iowa when he was hit by allegations that he had overstated his academic record and lifted sections of a speech by British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock without attribution. He dropped out, then suffered a near-fatal brain aneurysm that required two surgeries and extensive recuperation.

He fully recovered physically and politically, and, in recent years, has emerged as one of the Democratic Party's strongest foreign policy voices. Biden voted to authorize the Iraq war in 2002 but has become a harsh critic of President Bush. A nonbinding resolution endorsing Biden's plan to divide Iraq into three semiautonomous regions won more bipartisan support than any Iraq policy change to come before the Senate this year. Biden has made his expertise in world affairs the centerpiece of his presidential bid, arguing that an unstable world requires an experienced, steady hand.

[Full coverage of Biden on washingtonpost.com]

-- Shailagh Murray