Vice President Joe Biden: 'I Think I Would Have Been the Best President'

staff@people.com (Lindsay Kimble)
Updated

Vice President Joe Biden thinks he would have made a great commander in chief – despite his decision not to run for the presidency.

The 73-year-old told Good Morning America on Wednesday that while he is "confident" that fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton will be the party's nominee – and the next President – he still feels that he's the best man for the job.

"I had planned on running... I think I would have been the best President, but it was the right thing," Biden explained of opting out of the race after the 2015 death of his son Beau Biden from cancer. "No one should ever seek the presidency unless they're able to devote their whole heart and soul and passion into just doing that."

He continued, "And, Beau was my soul. I just wasn't ready to be able to do that. But, so, my one regret is my Beau's not here. I don't have any other regrets."



Biden has said in the past, however, that "every day" he regretted not running for the White House.

"My decision, I know, was the right decision," he told Bloomberg Politics in December. "I believed I could win, but that's not enough."

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Of presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, Biden told Robin Roberts on Wednesday, "I think he has been underestimated from the beginning but I also think its really, very, very early."

Biden added, "I think that what is gonna happen here is the constant attack coming from the Republican side... I don't think that's gonna wear well over the next couple months."

The Vice President is now focusing on his Cancer MoonShot 2020 initiative, which is geared toward dramatically improving cancer treatments and developing a vaccine-based immunotherapy by the year 2020.

"This allows me to pour all my energies into – doing something that, hopefully will – five years from now if someone's diagnosed with what my Beau was diagnosed with, they live," he explained, noting " there's so much promise out there."

Of his late son, Biden said, "he's the finest man I've ever known."

"He died like he lived, with great courage."