Joe Biden is In the Race: Email the Candidate Your Questions

I just received an email from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden that tomorrow he is announcing formally his intention to run for President of the United States.

Here is candidate Biden's campaign website.

Biden is a powerful ideas guy and gets points from me for being brazen, smart, and ready to dump political correctness. Biden is often intellectually ahead of his colleagues and can be flamboyant (well, I can be too). But lately, he's really been pulling the pieces together carefully and in a team manner on how to challenge the President's approach to the Iraq War and broader Middle East challenges.

He has asked the public to email him questions which he hopes to respond to on Thursday. I bet that he and his staff do their darndest given that they need to reach a lot of folks out there fast.

The email address for your questions is: [e-mail]

But here are mine -- and they are not soft balls:

Senator Biden, do you think that the invasion of Iraq was justified given what we know today about all of the reasons made for invading?

If you don't think that this was a just war, where now does the line of American accountability for outcomes in the Middle East end? What kind of war would you as a Democratic president endorse?

What would be the requirements for you to authorize an invasion? How would you approach this responsibility differently than President Bush?

I will email him also and see about posting the response I receive.

It would be a mistake of other contenders to underestimate Biden's political punch.

-- Steve Clemons is Senior Fellow and Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation and publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note.