"Keep going straight here," Joe Biden says. We've been at this for hours, climbing in and out of the SUV to look at stuff, a water tower, a stone wall, the house where the most beautiful girl in the world lived, hoagies, Herman the German's gas station, Meyers-eats-tires tire shop, the house where another most beautiful girl in the world lived, and he's holding up better than the rest of us. He never winces, has no achy knees, no lower-back anything, neck, joints; for the guy rockin' the Ray-Ban aviators, 70 is the new 60. "Wait, there's Little Italy down there," he says, peering out the window. "A lot of great Italian restaurants. If there's anybody down there who doesn't vote for me, I haven't found them yet. But I will. I will.

"Okay, in the interest of time, we'll stop here. Let's get out here."

It's his old street. His house. Small white brick. Black shutters. Cement path. A perfectly average 1950s American neighborhood in Wilmington, Delaware, now with a motorcade parked along Wilson Road and Secret Service guys swarming and the vice president of the United States wandering, leading fast. "Hi there," he says to a guy with a leaf blower. "I lived here for twenty years. Mack? Hey, Mack. I'm Joe. You're living in a house a guy named Kenny Horn used to live in. Kenny Horn.

"Okay, the driveway, watch yourself. So this is the house. That was my bedroom. I lived there with my brothers Jimmy, Frankie, and my Uncle Ed. One bureau, four drawers, everybody got a drawer. My sister, the princess Valerie, had her own room. Which was ten by twelve. But she deserved it. And my dad took great pride in having that barbecue pit." He circles the house, heads to the back door. "I wish I knew who lived here, because I would show you my room."

Uncle Ed, they called him Uncle Boo-Boo. Brilliant guy. Sprawling intellect. He stuttered. Way worse than Biden stuttered as a boy, which was bad enough. Uncle Boo-Boo never got past it. Never married. Dud job. Drank. Drank a lot. He served as an example of what could happen if you didn't rehearse, didn't practice getting your mouth unstuck. Biden has never had a drink.

"Oh, what the hell." He charges up to the back door, knocks. "Hello? Hello?" We stand on the back deck, waiting. Two Secret Service guys have their backs to us, stationed like owls by the picket fence.

He wants to be the best vice president ever," staffers told me, months ago, when I first started spending time with Joe Biden. That was all the talk last winter. Hillary would almost certainly be the nominee, not Biden, they said, whenever the 2016 issue came up, which wasn't often. But then, abruptly, Biden's stock started steeply rising, at least in the eyes of the public. Washington had been hyperventilating about the fiscal cliff, and Obama sent Biden in to broker a deal. Then came the killings in Newtown, Connecticut, and Obama sent Biden out to rally the public, Biden in to reason with Congress, Biden over to talk to the NRA. In 2013, Biden has emerged increasingly more visibly potent than his boss. THE MOST INFLUENTIAL VICE PRESIDENT IN HISTORY? one headline proffered.

"Well, he would be crazy not to keep his options open," staffers started saying then, whenever the 2016 issue came up. Which still wasn't often. The parlor game was not my reason for being there. I wanted to get to know Biden. I wanted to understand why "President Joe Biden" has such a preposterous ring to it, and I wanted to know if he knew it did.