Delawareans who used to see Joe Biden stroll through the Wilmington train station on his way to Washington are becoming used to seeing stories about his presence just about anywhere in the world.

    While he is the vice president, he seems to be increasingly doing what a secretary of state would do — meet and negotiate with heads of states of foreign countries.

    While the actual secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, is in China as of this writing, Joe is taking the pulse of things in countries that were once part of Russia. There is no doubt the former Delaware senator is as able to meet and greet foreign officials as well as anyone else in Washington.

    It appears President Obama has an auxiliary secretary of state, a situation that comes in very handy during these complex times.

    And it also does appear the vice president continues to say openly what is on his mind, which comes out as his own thoughts, not a pre-digested and approved expression from the policy wonks in the White House.

    All in all, the position of vice president may never be the same after Joe gets through with it.

    President Roosevelt’s vice president from 1933 to 1941, John Nance Garner, once likened the role of vice president as being as exciting as a pail of warm spit, or something close to that expression. Not any more.

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    While the vice presidency has clearly taken on added meaning in the current administration, we will have to wait and see how the roles of the numerous “czars” work  out. The president has appointed more than 30 of them in various capacities, none of them elected or survivors of Congressional scrutiny.

    With so much activity on various fronts, the chief executive needs all the help he can get. Even so, it will take time to see how the specially appointed representatives of the president work out.

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    On the governmental home front, Gov. Jack Markell has said he is interested in consolidating state government, and that promises to be both a highly interesting and likely cantankerous task.

    Businesses that find themselves over-extended and in financial difficulty have to examine very directly how they can improve their operations. Since government exists solely for the purpose of providing good services to its citizens, taking the same critical course is reasonable.

    A major difference is that in government the political obstacles come up at every turn. That’s where the fortitude of those who are the leaders in government, as well as the will and support of voters, is tested.

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    When a Hollywood actor or actress decides that what the country really needs is the benefit of their opinions regardless how ill-informed they might be, I’m quick to turn a deaf ear. Why should celebrity give them any better idea of what policies to follow than the positions of people not known to the public.

    But I am impressed, and it has a bearing on the comments above, at what actor Richard Dreyfuss is now doing. He describes himself as a full-time civic activist, and says that America, according to a recent story in the Portland (Maine) Press Herald, “is falling short in preparing its children to become leaders and participants in the political system.”

    He maintains that civics should be a required course from kindergarten through 12th grade so that students get the tools and enthusiasm they will need to lead the country.

    Dreyfuss says that the U.S. is unique in being a nation bound together by ideas, and each generation must be taught what the country stands for.

    Bravo!

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    Why government can generally be faulted for taking laborious and expensive ways to get something done is indicated by a public notice from the Baltimore District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that recently came to my attention. It would be more effective to quote the whole notice to illustrate my point, but just four sentences concerning the request for “public input” to the draft of the “Eastern Mountains and Piedmont Regional Supplement to the 1987 Corps of Engineers Wetland Delineation Manual” will be all you can take.

    “Commentors (sic) may wish to field test this supplement as part of their evaluation and comments. If so, the protocol for field testing must include the use of (1) the 1987 Wetland Delineation Manual with current guidance and (2) the 1987 Manual with this draft regional supplement on the same sampling points. A minimum of two points must be documented, one in the lower (wetland) community and one in the adjacent higher (upland) community. Commentors (sic) should include data recorded on both the current 1992 data forms and the proposed data forms from the Regional Supplement, maps indicating the location of the field site and data collection points (upland and wetland), and a completed questionnaire (see attached) for each delineation.”

    Can’t you just see members of the public rushing to sign up?

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    Along with other readers, I enjoyed the story in last week’s Dover Post about the late Douglas Harris and his being named to the Delaware Aviation Hall of Fame.

    As Jeff Brown’s story points out, Doug Harris was a man of many interests and accomplishments. Besides those mentioned in the story, I remember him as a soft-spoken and friendly man we used to see from time to time in the Countrie Eatery restaurant. He identified for us the unusual bird we sometimes saw on Silver Lake, one that dove under the water for a minute or so hunting for food. It was an aninga, a duck-like fowl with a long neck.

    Doug Harris also remains in my memory as one of the first and most faithful advertisers in this newspaper when it began in 1975.

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    “Mr. Miller, I want to speak to you about your son. I discovered him playing doctor with my daughter!”

    “Well, it’s only natural for children that age to explore their sexuality in the form of play.”

    “Sexuality?! He took out her appendix!”