The surprising non-embarrassment that is Joe Biden.

There are two Democrats running at the top of the ticket this year, and only one of them is President Barack Obama. When Joe Biden’s name first came up, in 2008, as a possible running mate, I told everyone I knew that it would never happen. When Obama did choose Biden, I braced myself for disaster. But Biden turned out to be the right guy for the job. People don’t appreciate what a surprising outcome this is.

My reasoning back in 2008 was grounded in observable fact. Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign had collapsed after it was revealed that his seemingly heartfelt testimonial about being first in his family to go to college had been lifted from a speech by the British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. The personal nature of the subject matter made Biden look like a phony, and, soon after, it came out that Biden had also gotten busted for plagiarism when he was a law student.

Biden returned to the Senate and, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, presided over the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas. That Thomas was confirmed in spite of his shaky legal qualifications and the persuasive allegations that he’d subjected his employee Anita Hill to sexual harassment (while heading the federal agency that investigates such allegations) must be judged, at least in part, as the fault of Biden himself. Fearful of being branded a racist and squeamish about probing Thomas’s personal life, Biden ended up with the worst of both worlds: The hearings became a media circus and Thomas carried into the Court a newly acquired bitterness about liberals that probably pushed him further to the right.

Biden’s subsequent stewardship of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations restored his reputation by playing to his strengths as a practical-minded coalition-builder who did his homework. He played a key role in persuading President Bill Clinton to intervene in the Balkans conflict, and he urged President George W. Bush, early in the Iraq war, to effectively partition the country into Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish territories, a creative solution that may yet prove the only way to resolve that country’s political divisions.

By 2007, Biden’s rehabilitation was so complete that a presidential run once again seemed plausible. He was certainly more experienced than John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama. But, on the very day he announced his candidacy, Biden was quoted in The New York Observer describing Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” He never really recovered from this disastrous start. After staking his candidacy on the Iowa caucus, Biden came in fifth and departed the race.