in 1988 and in 2008, but he wasn't taken seriously as a contender in either election. When Barack Obama was given the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, Obama selected Biden as his running mate. The outspoken VP, with his unorthodox but comical comments and his enthusiastic passion for his causes, gained very high popularity ratings.

Trump might have faced off against Biden in 2016, if not for a tragedy that hit the VP's family just months before the primary elections. Biden's son, Beau, died after a difficult struggle with brain cancer. Biden said he wasn't up for any kind of campaign at the time, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who many believed was a shoe-in, was already campaigning.

Since Clinton’s loss, Biden has said he regrets not running.

Biden hasWhen Gingrich met Yasser Arafat

GOP presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich stirred up plenty of controversy last week when he called Palestinians an "invented people" in an interview from the campaign trail.

"I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places,' Gingrich told the Jewish Channel last week.

All of which makes the above 1993 photo of Gingrich, then House Minority Whip, embracing the late Palestinian Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat, published by the Huffington Post's Sam Stein, perhaps noteworthy....