Vice President Joe Biden has reportedly been added to a potential shortlist of Hillary Clinton's choices for secretary of state if she were to be elected president in November.
The Clinton campaign has not formally reached out to Biden but has put him at the top of its list, Politico reported, citing a source familiar with the matter.
Biden, a former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, has played an integral role in President Obama's foreign policy decisions and the Clinton team believes he would be a good fit for her administration.
On the campaign trail for Clinton, Biden has spoken out about how some foreign allies have expressed concern over Trump's unconventional remarks on U.S. foreign policy, Politico noted.
In August, he traveled to Latvia to assure NATO allies that America's commitment to them will hold, despite Trump's questioning of the alliance's value and worries especially within the Baltic region about Russian aggression.
Just on Monday, on a stop at a Clinton campaign office in Toledo, Biden said that he'd spoken to the Latvian president, who'd urged him to come to Europe and reassure people that if Russia invades, NATO will defend them.
Biden and Clinton have known each other since her days as first lady and worked together while Clinton was secretary of state. Their relationship somewhat soured last summer, though, as Biden's political team gamed out a possible presidential run.
While they have appeared to put this issue behind them, Biden and Clinton have often differed on foreign policy strategy and decision making, Politico reported.
They differed over leaving troops in Iraq, the surge in Afghanistan, and whether to arm Syria's rebels and bomb Libya–and Clinton took the more hawkish line in every case. During the Obama administration's lengthy review of Afghanistan policy early in his tenure, for instance, a skeptical Biden urged the president not to escalate the war, while Clinton backed Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for 40,000 more troops.
Biden also reportedly was skeptical of the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan in 2011, which Clinton strongly supported.
Politico reported that former Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, former Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns, and James Stavridis, a retired admiral, are also in consideration, among others, to be Clinton's secretary of state.