Michael Hirsh highlights Joe Biden's integral role in the Obama administration, wondering if he is the most influential VP in history:

Over the past four years Biden has insinuated himself into the White House, while seeming hardly to try, in a way that no other vice president in memory has done. He and Obama, both consummate pragmatists though they tend to be liberal in outlook, have achieved something close to a mind meld across a whole range of issues, including foreign policy, the economy, and political strategy. Biden said it outright in his speech during the presidential campaign: "I literally get to be the last guy in the room with the president. That's our arrangement." That's no small thing in a town where power is often measured in minutes of presidential face time. 

But by far the biggest achievement is wielding all this influence while being widely viewed as a joke. And the breadth of his portfolio is pretty amazing: