"I sort of shorthand it as what I want the headline to read on Dec. 15," Biden explains. "'Biden did this,' 'Biden did that,' ... what do I want?"

With Democrats recapturing the Senate after the defection of Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., Biden was recently forced to reconvene his annual headline wish list.

The new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden -- who harbors hopes of running for president in 2004 -- mulled over a return to chairing the high-profile Judiciary Committee, which he did most notably during the Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991.

In the end, he decided to stick with the Foreign Relations Committee, in hopes of returning the panel to Washington powerhouse status. Two years from now, he says, he wants the headlines to read "Foreign Relations Committee back," after years of devolving into a committee of either rubber-stamping or knee-jerk partisan disapproval, most recently under the watch of Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C.

Back, that is, to "the prominence that it once had" during the chairmanships of Sens. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., in the 1980s, and especially J. William Fulbright in the 1960s and early '70s. "People took it seriously," Biden said in a Thursday briefing for a dozen reporters. During the Vietnam War, when foreign policy was at the forefront of American discourse, former Secretary of State "Henry Kissinger felt obliged to come and make his case to that committee; if he didn't make his case to that committee, he had a problem."

Even before Biden sets about trying to refocus the nation's sights on international affairs at a time of relative peace, he has two other struggles -- he is still trying to figure out where the Bush administration is, exactly, on several foreign policy issues, and he is still clearly trying to balance his roles as a committee chairman and a White House wannabe. For Biden, that comes down to how much he is willing to work with the administration to create good policy and how much of an obstacle he will be if it's good politics.

As of right now, the less partisan side of Biden is winning, though the venom lurks right beneath the surface. Biden clearly sees the Bush administration's foreign policy as incoherent, but he's charitable in his assessment.

"I think it's too early to ... judge this president on foreign policy," he says. "This administration is getting over what every administration has to do," that is, square its foreign policy campaign rhetoric with the realities of governing. Biden says many of Bush's campaign positions on foreign policy were based on "this intensity of dislike for Clinton -- 'If Clinton did it, it's gotta be wrong!'" Bush shouldn't be seen as "backtracking" on positions when he segues from conservative into many of the same actions he criticized Clinton for pursuing. "I don't think of it as backtracking; it's resolving."

Most recently, Bush resolved his position on the Balkans, changing his campaign cry for withdrawal to a possible new commitment of U.S. troops under the NATO flag in Macedonia.

Biden says that Bush is finding his way in all things global, and if his hearings are able to push matters along, so much the better. His hearing last week on Macedonia got the administration to pay some attention to the matter, he believes, a trend he hopes will continue as he attempts to become -- at the very least -- the Fulbright of the millennium. "I will credit that hearing for raising the focus of this issue down at the administration."

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