By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Watching Joseph R. Biden Jr. build his presidency is like watching someone come of age in real time.

You see, I’ve been acutely aware of this individual almost since the time I became involved actively in a political campaign on the other side of our vast nation. Biden got elected to the U.S. Senate in Delaware in 1972; while he was celebrating that victory, my friends and I were licking our wounds out west in Oregon while our presidential candidate, George McGovern, was suffering a monstrous landslide defeat at the hands of President Richard Nixon.

Yes, I watched the young senator go through the personal agony of losing his wife and infant daughter in a car crash before he would take office. I watched him assume his senatorial duties and then grow into the job he inherited.

Over the years I became aware of the leadership roles he assumed as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I watched him pontificate incessantly at times during committee hearings. I winced on occasion as he would bloviate past the time allotted to him.

Then I watched him run for president in 1988, only to crash and burn when he was caught copying remarks from a British politician and using them while trying to tell his own life story. The guy I supported that year for the Democratic nomination, Michael Dukakis, would suffer a landslide loss to Vice President George H.W. Bush.

Sigh …

He ran again for president in 2008 and then got thumped by the eventual nominee, Barack H. Obama … who then selected Biden to run with him as vice president.

And now he has won the highest office, grabbed the brass ring.

Hey, I am sitting now in the middle of what they call Flyover Country. I live in Texas, one of the most reliably Republican states in America. My pride in watching Joe Biden ascend to the highest office hasn’t abated one little bit.

It’s almost as if I am watching someone I “grew up with” along the way. I was barely old enough to vote when Joe Biden won his first federal office in 1972; heck, he wasn’t even old enough to assume his Senate seat until he turned 30 two weeks after that election.

Time has marched on. I am proud of Joe Biden, of his tenacity and of the courage he has exhibited while picking himself up after falling short of his aspirations. I believe the setbacks — and, yes, the tragedy — he has endured have prepared Joe Biden well for the challenges that lie ahead.