As a curious species, most of us like to sample things for the first time. We’ll try a new dish, visit places we’ve never been before or try out a new TV show. This week, Stephen Colbert debuted the new Late Show with Stephen Colbert, replacing the iconic David Letterman. On his first show, his headline guest was George Clooney while Jeb Bush joined him later on. During his second show, the featured guest was the Vice-President of the United States, Joe Biden. As we all know, Biden lost his son Beau to brain cancer earlier this year, the 2nd time in his life Biden has endured the unimaginable grief of losing a child. Shortly after being elected to the Senate in 1972, his first wife and infant daughter were killed in an automobile accident.
Anyway, Biden’s interview with Colbert was one of the most emotional I’ve ever seen on a comedy show. It was a raw, frank, and honest revelation of a man who is still feeling the deepest sorrow and loss. The particular context of Joe Biden’s life now, of course, is the drumbeat of speculation about whether he will jump in the 2016 race for the Democratic nomination for president. In the interview, the VP wondered aloud for all to see if he had it in him to devote his full heart and soul to the pursuit of the presidency. You can click here to see the interview.
Biden has long sought the Oval Office, having run with a spectacular lack of success in 1988 and again in 2008. He did not win a single delegate in either contest. I personally met Biden in the fall of 2007 and chatted with him for a couple of minutes. I was in the midst of my road warrior days and was sitting two rows behind him on a flight from Des Moines to Denver. When I got off the plane, he was standing off to the side, seemingly waiting for somebody. I approached him and told him, although I was a Republican, that I had long admired his career in the Senate and that I hoped the media would give him a chance to share his voice. You may recall, this was the Obama-Clinton-Edwards show. All of the attention was was on the former First Lady, the young charismatic African-American senator from Illinois and John Kerry’s running mate from 2004, John Edwards. (Of course, a similar phenomenon exists today with the wall-to-wall coverage of Hillary and Donald Trump). Anyway, my encounter with Biden was brief but I felt instantly that this was a good man, an honorable man, somebody with, having served in the Senate for 35 years, was worthy of being considered seriously for the top job in the land.
Today the Veep has to decide if he has another run in him. 3 months ago, with the fresh grief of the loss of Beau and a seemingly invincible front-runner in Hillary Clinton, there didn’t seem to be any reason to put his family through the rigors of a presidential bid. But today, with Hillary’s poll numbers in full plummet due to the email scandal, there is an increasing groundswell among “establishment” Democrats for Biden to get into the race, if for no other reason to give the party a candidate with gravitas if Hillary completely collapses under the weight of the scandal. Right now the only other declared candidate who even registers in the polls is the socialist Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders.
There are two schools of thought on Biden, one that acknowledges and respects his decades of service and the other that views him as a gaffe-prone clown. I have long subscribed to the former. In my view, Biden has long been underrated. While Barack Obama has been the Polarizor in Chief the Veep has quietly, outside of the media glare, been the man who has successfully negotiated with the Republicans in Congress. In two books, The Price of Politics (Bob Woodward) and The Stranger (Chuck Todd), the authors depict President Obama as aloof and not engaged in the politics of persuasion and negotiation. In short, Obama has, from the beginning, believed in his own press, that he was the most gifted orator in the history of civilization. Obama believes that the power of persuasion starts and ends with giving speeches and that every one else will be realize that he is right and they are wrong.
So much about politics today is about demonizing your opponents. The presidencies of Bush and Obama have split the nation apart. Biden, on the other hand, as a long-time senator, knows how to negotiate. He’ll throw partisan bombs with the best of them but, behind the scenes, he understands the necessity and practicality of compromise and he has helped Obama immensely. His worth in the Obama administration has been summed up as such: the president has said that the best decision he ever made in politics was selecting Joe Biden as his Vice-President. Pardon me while I pat myself on the back by sharing a quote from the very first political blog I wrote seven years ago when I discussed the choices Obama had for his VP:
If we are to believe Obama’s own words that his Vice-President will be his “top adviser,” I believe that the best choice for Obama would be Joe Biden, who is somewhat the Democratic mirror of John McCain. Biden represents everything that Obama is not and therefore would balance the ticket.
— Chris Bodig (Bodig Political Blog), August 20, 2007
Anyway, I have no idea whether Biden will jump into the race or not. There are many reasons not too, aside from the grief he’s feeling. He would be starting way behind from an organizational and fund-raising standpoint. Hillary Clinton, despite her plummeting favorable/unfavorable ratings, has an enormous campaign already in place and even pointed out that she’s secured virtually all of the “super-delegates” for the nomination. The super-delegates are party brokers and insiders who can back whichever candidate they prefer regardless of what happens in the individual state polls. Biden would have to decide about whether a “who is honest” and “who do you trust” line of attack against Hillary was a game he wants to play. He also has to weigh the fact that, if elected, he would be by far the oldest president ever (74 years old on inauguration day). That’s five years older than Reagan was and two years older than John McCain would have been if he had won. Of course, the Dems seem to be favoring their elders on this cycle; Hillary would be 69 on inauguration day, Bernie Sanders 75 (even older than Biden).
Now, on the positive side, he clearly has an opening here because of Hillary’s self-inflicted wounds. Each new poll that comes out shows more support for Biden and less for Clinton even though he isn’t even in the race. He is the “safe” choice, the candidate who doesn’t have an ongoing FBI investigation against them, the one who doesn’t have an ongoing scandal that the esteemed Bob Woodward has compared to Watergate. He will be able to run as Obama’s third term who will be loyal to Obama’s legacy. He is immensely likable, far more than Hillary. On the GOP side, only Ben Carson, John Kasich and Marco Rubio can approach Biden’s likability. If you look at every presidential election since Nixon, the most likable candidate won the Oval Office. You also have to consider this: he knows he can do the job and wants it. In fact, in his dying days, son Beau urged his father to give it one more try. What Biden’s wrestling with is whether he’s emotionally prepared to go through the rigors of the campaign right now.
What’s interesting about this is that, on cable news and the Sunday shows, the Republicans seem to be hoping Biden will run and the Democrats seem to be throwing cold water on the idea. I’m assuming this is because the Dems still are clinging to the “first woman prez” hope and the Republicans hate her so much that they want to see anything that would prevent her from becoming the Commander in Chief.
I’m going to issue a warning to my Republican friends: be careful about what you wish for. In my estimation, Joe Biden would be a far more formidable opponent than Hillary Clinton. He would likely get the Obama political geniuses (like David Axelrod and David Plouffe) behind him. As a man who is not even close to being wealthy, he would be able to channel some of Bernie Sanders’ anti-Wall Street supporters in a way that Hillary can’t. As the VP, his salary is $230,000, as a Senator it was less than $200k. This would also help him immensely with the working class. He is not poor but he really is a “working Joe.” And here is the coup de grace: Biden would almost certainly choose popular liberal senator Elizabeth Warren as his running mate. The Dems’ would settle for a first woman VP instead of president with the knowledge that she would be Biden’s likely anointed successor.
In recent polling, even Donald Trump has pulled even nationally with Hillary Clinton while Biden beats him by 10 points. In short, a Biden-Warren ticket will be far tougher for any GOP candidate to beat than a Hillary-whoever ticket. I think that any of the now 16 Republican candidates (Rick Perry dropped out yesterday) could beat Hillary; against Biden and Warren, it’s a coin flip.
I’ll finish with this: I’ll be voting for the Republican candidate regardless of who wins the nomination but, if our side loses, I would be proud to call Joe Biden the President of the United States.
Thanks for reading!
Chris Bodig