Biden: I Do Not Regret Staying Out of Presidential Race

Vice President Joe Biden will make the lead speech Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention, but he has no regrets not being the one making the speech Thursday night accepting the Democratic nomination for president.

"It was just the right decision for my family," Biden told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program. "I plan on staying involved. I'm not going away. That's different than I would like to make some of those decisions."

Biden last year announced he was not running, ending months of speculation after wrestling with doubts about a campaign while mourning the death of son Beau, who died of brain cancer last May.

"I got in trouble for saying, you know, anybody who runs for president, if they don't believe they're the most qualified person in the country to do it, they shouldn't run," Biden said Wednesday. "So there's things that I wish I could manage these next four years. But I don't have many regrets and that's not one of them."

He laughed off a question about whether he'd do better than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton dealing with Donald Trump.

"Look, I learned one thing," said Biden. "The way to become really popular is announce you're not running for president. "

Biden also reflected on his two terms as President Barack Obama's vice president, saying they have disagreed over the years, but they have had a deal that "whatever we had on our chest, we would get it off our chest."

"And we holler at each other," said Biden. "We have private lunches together. We disagree ... if you go back and look, he and I never disagreed on a major substantive issue. I knew I was in a comfort zone where he and I were on the same page on all the major issues. … You know, the president is no drama Obama. He said, 'You know, we've become really good friends. I never expected that.' I said, 'I didn't either.'"

Biden said there is also a "genuine trust" between himself and Obama.

"He has character," said Biden. "I've never once worried that he was going to play a game with me. And I know he trusts me … yet we argue like hell. We're not shouting at each other all the time. But we're very blunt with each other."

Biden said he does have a number of things on the horizon, including his anti-cancer initiative.

"When you have somebody you love in trouble, you try to learn all there is about the problem they have," he said of son Beau's problems. "What I learned through Beau was that it wasn't until the last five years that immunologists started working with virologists, working with chemical engineers. There was none of this collaboration taking place or very little of it."

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