VP Debate - Decision Making: Can you think of a policy is...

MS. IFILL: Final question tonight before your closing

statements, starting with you, Senator Biden. Can you think of a

single issue -- and this is to cast light for people who are just

trying to get to know you in your final debate, your only debate of

this year. Can you think of a single issue, policy issue, in which

you were forced to change a long-held view in order to accommodate

changed circumstances?

SEN. BIDEN: Yeah, I can.

When I got to the United States Senate and went on the Judiciary

Committee as a young lawyer, I was of the view and had been trained in

the view that the only thing that mattered was whether or not a

nominee appointed -- suggested by the president had a judicial

temperament, had not committed a crime of moral turpitude, and was --

had been a good student. And it didn't take me long -- it was hard to

change, but it didn't take me long, but it took about five years for

me to realize that the ideology of that judge makes a big difference.

That's why I led the fight against Judge Bork. Had he been in

the court, I suspect there would be a lot of changes that I don't like

and the American people wouldn't like, including everything from Roe

v. Wade to issues relating to civil rights and civil liberties.

And so that -- that -- that -- that was one of the intellectual

changes that took place in my career, as I got a close look at it.

And that's why I was the first chairman of the Judiciary Committee to

forthrightly state that it matters what your judicial philosophy is;

the American people have a right to understand it and to know it. But

I did change