CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – The words were a bit simpler but the answers none the shorter when Joe Biden, who has a reputation for being verbose, faced an audience of fourth-graders Thursday.

The Democratic presidential candidate encountered the group in the lobby of the New Hampshire statehouse on his way to filing his candidacy with the secretary of state’s office.

Asked how long he had been in the Senate, the Delaware senator, who was elected in 1972, started talking about the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He then detoured into an aside about how his sister was pushed to be a nurse or teacher while he was encouraged to pursue any career he wanted despite grades worse than hers.

He also gave a detailed answer to a question adults don’t often ask candidates: How did the war in Iraq start? Biden compared the war in Iraq with the invasion of Afghanistan.

“Osama bin Laden set up camps there, and he was getting a lot of help from folks running that country called Afghanistan. And that’s where he planned an attack on America to bring the World Trade Towers down and kill all those innocent Americans. We had a right to, and we should’ve gone, to Afghanistan to try to get bin Laden and those people who’ve done very bad things to America,” he said.

“But the president, I think, he got a little confused,” he continued. “I think he thought the folks in another country, way, way far away, far from here, it’s also far from Afghanistan, called Iraq. He said, ‘The guy in Iraq he helped bin Laden do bad things to us,’ and he didn’t. He wasn’t a good guy, but he didn’t help. So we used that kind of as an excuse to attack Iraq.”

Biden also asked the children a few questions, including the names of the past two presidents. He especially liked the answer he got when he asked them to predict the next president.

“You!”

Speaking to reporters after he filed his paperwork, Biden praised two New Hampshire traditions – the state’s history of holding the first primaries and the tendency of its voters to wait until the last minute to make up their minds.

“It is a literal fact, it is not an exaggeration, it is not fiction, it is not hyperbole, to suggest that without the New Hampshire primary and the Iowa caucus, there is no level playing field,” he said. “This is the only place – it may not be the only place possible – but it is the only place now where you can actually compete with your idea and your record.”

When a reporter asked him to explain his low poll numbers given that level playing field, Biden said the polls don’t mean much yet.

“New Hampshirites never make up their minds until about the middle of December,” he said. “I’m ahead of where John Kerry was in the process … This is absolutely wide open. This has been about money, name recognition and stardom, which is understandable. I’m not complaining … I know it gets down to serious consideration.”

In a poll released last week by St. Anslem College, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton led the Democratic field at 43 percent, with Biden in 6th place at 2 percent. Two months before the 2004 primary, Kerry was at 17 percent, about 20 percentage points behind the front-runner Howard Dean. Kerry went on to win the primary and the nomination.

Biden, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said when voters start paying more attention to the campaigns, they will realize that he offers the best plan to end the war in Iraq. He has proposed carving the country into three distinct states, with a central government located in Baghdad.

“The single most significant issue Democrats are concerned about is Iraq and American foreign policy,” he said. “As long as that’s the case, I’m far and away the most qualified person to deal with those issues based on my track record.”

AP-ES-11-01-07 1619EDT