Vice President Joe Biden is known for a lot of things: authenticity, verbosity, good humor, commitment to public policy.

He’s not known as a prevaricator.

Still, if the vice president is going to run for the top job — and I’m not yet convinced he’s going to do so — he’s got to clear up a serious matter.

What was his view on the raid to kill terrorist leader Osama bin Laden? Was he for it or not?

Biden is sending a mixed message regarding the bin Laden raid, which in May 2011 ended with bin Laden being shot to death by a Navy SEAL commando in Pakistan.

It’s been reported that he wanted to wait “for two more things” to occur before sending in the commandos and that he gave that advice to President Obama. Now he says he was for it all along.

I see some language-parsing on the horizon, which doesn’t answer the question about what he endorsed and when he endorsed it.

If he was in favor of the raid at the beginning, but wanted to wait for further confirmation that bin Laden was holed up in that big house in Pakistan, then it’s OK to say so.

Let’s not play games, Mr. Vice President. Give it to us straight.

Then you can let us all know whether you want to run for president.