From The Dallas Morning News’ archives: Washington bureau chief Carl P. Leubsdorf’s profile of Joe Biden, from the senator’s first White House campaign, in 1987:

Lifelong ambition led Joe Biden to Senate, White House aspirations

During President Reagan's first term, Biden served on the Senate Budget Committee and co-sponsored a controversial plan to freeze all federal spending, including Social Security benefits.

And he formed a close alliance on the Judiciary Committee with its conservative Republican chairman, Strom Thurmond, that eventually led to enactment of a major anti-crime bill.

He also served for eight years on the Intelligence Committee and says he headed off two Reagan administration covert actions by threatening to make them public.

Although fellow senators in a 1984 U.S. News & World Report survey rated Biden, along with Connecticut's Christopher Dodd, as the Senate's "leading authority" on foreign policy, his legislative record is modest.

"If I were to compare him with other liberal senators,' said a former aide, who asked not to be identified. "I'd say he's more political and less involved in the issues. He's a mile wide and an inch deep. He hasn't mastered any issues and hasn't taken the lead on any issues."

But Paul Laudicina, his former chief legislative aide, noted, "He can spend a night studying an issue that someone else spends a week with and do much better with it."

Another former aide said criticism of Biden's meager legislative record overlooks the fact that, until this year, Biden was a junior senator or in the minority party. "This is his first chance to be in a major position."

Still, this aide conceded, "He does have a very spotty reputation with his colleagues where he's known as something of a hothead. Even Democrats blanched when he went after (Secretary of State George) Shultz. He grandstands. But there's an element of envy in it."

The aide referred to a July 1986 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on South Africa at which, for several minutes, Shultz and Biden engaged in a virtual shouting match. It drew national television coverage and put an angry picture of Biden on the front pages of many newspapers.

"It may have been genuine anger," said a former committee staff member. "But I'm sure he (Biden) went into that room prepared to do it. To those who had seen him before, it was all very predictable."

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