On the night of October 11, 2012, Barack Obama loped across the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base, looking as if he were trying hard not to grin. It was a change of mood; eight days earlier, he had done poorly in his first Presidential debate with Mitt Romney, and the feeling in his campaign was gloomy. But, that evening, Vice-President Joe Biden had had his first debate with Paul Ryan, during which he called out the Romney campaign on its “malarkey.” Some commentators thought that he had looked foolish—he’d laughed a lot, and when Biden laughs, he throws back his head. (Mark Salter, the Republican operative, called the Obama-Biden debate combination “sleepy cop/crystal-meth cop.”) But even many of the critics thought that he’d won. He had reminded a lot of people of why they wanted a Democrat in the White House, particularly on questions like income inequality. One of those people seems to have been Obama himself. He’d watched the debate on Air Force One and, though there wasn’t a plan for him to speak to reporters, he swung over to where they were standing.
"I'm going to make a special point of saying that I thought Joe Biden was terrific tonight,” the President said. "I could not be prouder of him. I thought he made a very strong case. I really think that his passion for making sure that the economy grows for the middle class came through. So I'm very proud of him.”
Obama also seemed, in the days to come, more proud of himself. Having Biden with him on the ticket in 2012 helped him win and, it seemed, helped make him a better President when he did. That was the case when what was scoffed at as yet another instance of Bidenic indiscipline—getting ahead of his boss by saying that he was “absolutely comfortable” with full legal recognition of same-sex marriage—led Obama, too, to say what he actually believed, and arrive at a place where he felt proud to be.
The idea that a person could make those around him better came up again this past weekend, when Obama delivered the eulogy for Biden’s son, Beau, who had died of brain cancer, at the age of forty-six. The Vice-President, by all accounts, was hit hard by his son’s death. In 1973, he had taken his Senate oath next to the hospital bed where Beau lay, at age three, after surviving the car crash that had killed Biden’s wife and daughter. He was also the son who had served in the reserves in Iraq, been elected as the attorney general of Delaware, and one day, perhaps, could go even further in politics than his father had. "He even looked and sounded like Joe, although I think Joe would be first to acknowledge that Beau was an upgrade—Joe 2.0,” Obama said. He added, "That’s who Beau was. Someone who cared. Someone who charmed you, and disarmed you, and put you at ease. When he’d have to attend a fancy fund-raiser with people who took themselves way too seriously, he’d walk over to you and whisper something wildly inappropriate in your ear.” (Joe Biden, for his part, has been known to whisper wildly inappropriate things, but when he was, for example, caught on an open mic telling Obama that the passage of the Affordable Care Act was “a big fucking deal,” he was reminding Obama that he should take something seriously.) At the funeral, Obama said that he loved Biden. The two have a weekly lunch; the most recent one was on Wednesday, Biden’s first day back at work since Beau’s death.
But Obama is almost done being President. Who else can Biden make better? Put another way, why doesn’t Biden run for President in 2016? Hillary Clinton may not want him to. But it might do her good, even if she is, as everyone says, the inevitable candidate. And it can only make the Democratic Party better.
Last year, Evan Osnos spoke to the Vice-President for a New Yorker Profile, and, Osnos wrote, "I asked Biden how he will respond if opponents say he is too old to be President. 'I think it’s totally legitimate for people to raise it,' he said. 'And I’ll just say, Look at me. Decide.’ ’’ Biden is seventy-two. Hillary Clinton is sixty-seven. More tellingly, Biden added, “I watched my father. I made a mistake in encouraging him to retire. I just think as long as you think you can do it and you’re physically healthy....”
The Clintons have become very wealthy as a result of their book deals, speaking fees, and other endeavors—they have made thirty million dollars just since Hillary left the State Department. (Bill Clinton recently said that he would consider giving up paid speeches—after Hillary wins.) Joe Biden is not a very wealthy man. By one estimate, his net worth is between thirty-nine thousand and eight hundred thousand dollars; by another, with his mortgage figured in, it is a negative number. (Biden: “But I got a great pension and I got a good salary!") Which way does that cut, for each of them? Perhaps it makes a Biden campaign less feasible, in that he has less flexibility; it might also make it more desirable, depending on one’s definition of independence.
Last week, Hillary Clinton almost lost to Bernie Sanders in a Wisconsin straw poll (the tally was forty-nine per cent to forty-one), but Sanders, who can reasonably be called a socialist, is not likely to be the one who makes clear what her real general-election vulnerabilities are, or how to overcome them. Biden would. He may have no chance of winning. But he is a more plausible candidate than anyone Clinton is facing now, and perhaps the best answer to the fear that, as the Republicans fight it out among themselves, she will drift through until the convention, with a stray glance at Martin O’Malley, and enter the general election unprepared for the fight. Obama was right about Biden’s debate with Ryan: rewatching it is a good reminder of his ability to speak plainly and in detail about Democratic economic policies—something that involves more than just throwing out lines about level playing fields. (Republicans have been doing that, too.) Maybe Hillary Clinton, in a speech she’s scheduled to give on Saturday, will find a way to make those themes work for her. She hasn’t yet.
And, although she served four years as Secretary of State, Biden has a deeper background in foreign policy, with years as a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a skepticism about things like troop deployments that might appeal to noninterventionists—who can be found across the spectrum. His 2006 proposal for Iraq—reshaping the country into a loose three-part federation—also much derided, does not, in light of recent events, look all that bad. (As it is, a sectarian Shiite-dominated central government unwilling to give a voice or commit resources to Sunni and Kurdish regions has contributed to the rise of ISIS.)
But how, might one ask, could Biden win in a general election when Obama, his boss, is so unpopular? That question points to what may be one of the most interesting results of having Biden in the race. Hillary Clinton would have to decide where she really stands on the Obama Presidency, in all its aspects, and say what she thinks about it. (He was her boss, too.) Her advisers have made it clear that she’s counting on the Obama coalition; how tied are their votes to the Obama legacy? Clinton needs a response that doesn’t just involve hinting that everything would have been better if she’d been elected in 2008. She tried out some jabs at Obama, in an interview with the Atlantic last August, in which, quoting one of his mantras, she said, “Great nations need organizing principles, and 'Don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle,” and called his choices on Syria a “failure.” Her spokesman said afterward that she hadn’t meant to criticize the President, and looked forward “to hugging it out.” The message there, whatever it was, got muddled. Biden’s presence might clarify it, and present some interesting choices to Democratic primary voters—and to Obama, who might not endorse anyone before the nomination, but could give a few hints of his preference along the way.
The President, in his eulogy, spoke to Beau Biden’s children. "To Natalie and Hunter, there aren’t words big enough to describe how much your dad loved you, how much he loved your mom. But I will tell you what, Michelle and I and Sasha and Malia, we’ve become part of the Biden clan. We’re honorary members now. And the Biden family rule applies. We’re always here for you, we always will be—my word as a Biden.” That might have some resonance for their grandfather, as well. Why not run?
