2008 is going to be an exciting time for anyone who is into politics. The choices the Democratic Party has for president are outstanding. For the first time a woman and an African-American are leading the polls and both have an outstanding chance of winning. Anyone who listens to Barack Obama speak can not help but feel optimistic about the future. Hillary Clinton has been a leader in promoting universal health care and ensuring that we will have the social security benefits that our grandparents and parents have. However, despite the fact that they are both talented individuals, they lack the experience and authority of lesser-known candidate Joe Biden.

So who is this Joe Biden? Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) is currently the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and a member of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. He has been a senator for over 30 years. He authored such bills as the Violence Against Women Act, one of the most heralded bills by feminists since they got the right to vote. Beat that Hillary Clinton. He is also wrote the Community Oriented Policing Services bill, which added federal funding to police departments, increasing our police force by more than 100,000 and leading to a drop in crime during the 1990s. Bush cut funding for the bill, and the crime rate subsequently went up again.

As for his foreign policy experience, well, his record speaks for itself. Biden was the largest voice in the Senate when it came to trying to send troops to Rwanda to prevent the genocide. When the genocide in Kosovo came around, Biden raised his voice again and succeeded. He also created the plan that lead to democratizing the region and making the region a safe place to be for our 20,000 troops still stationed there, none of whom have died since the plan has been implemented. When it comes to the situation in Darfur, Joe Biden has been a leading voice for sending troops to end the genocide there, and has been a strong critic of the Bush administration for classifying it as genocide and still doing nothing.

Of course, we have to discuss the elephant in the room, or in this case the donkey. What is Joe Biden’s stance on the war in Iraq? He did vote for it in 2002, but has been a strong critic ever since and was the first senator to admit that it was a mistake on television. The current defense spending bill you hear about in the news that calls for a withdrawal timeline was co-authored by Joe Biden. More importantly, Joe Biden actually has a political plan for Iraq, and it all goes back to the system that worked in Kosovo.

When the genocide broke out in the Yugoslavia area, and after main hostilities ceased, President Clinton implemented a plan for a federal government with a weak central government and strong state governments. Each region had its own army, its own legislature and its own set of laws – very similar to the state system in our country. Ten years later, the country has become more unified, the three separate armies have combined to form one and the federal system has created a stronger central government. Joe Biden wants the same plan for Iraq. He wants to include Syria and Iran in a dialogue for the establishment of a stable Iraq instead of threatening to not speak to them. His plan is known as the Biden-Gelb Plan (www.planforiraq.com). As history has shown us, four things emerge from a civil war: long-term imperialism, dictatorship, expulsion of one of the warring groups or the establishment of a federal system of government. Joe Biden is doing what makes sense: relying on the past to predict the future.

Joe Biden’s plan has been endorsed from people as far left as New York Times Columnist Thomas L. Friedman and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., to people as far right as pundit Bill O’ Reilly and Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan. While Obama and Clinton may be the stars in the room, Joe Biden is the most viable candidate for president, and Obama for vice president.