Ever more, Democrats worried about the Clinton campaign hope that Joe Biden will jump into the race with all his capacious humanity. In this politically breathless moment, they will be spending the next few days waiting for Joe.
It is easy enough to see why. At whatever distance, Joe Biden is an easy man to like. Those who have worked with him closely describe the Biden voters see -- a politician who loves people, as warm and generous as one could ask. It is no mean feat in his Darwinian milieu that almost everyone seems to like him. For Democrats, the sight of Biden in a crowd conjures a warmth the vice president clearly returns.
And he is never better than in times of sorrow or adversity. His remembrance of Ted Kennedy at the senator's memorial service was a marvel of empathy -- not least when he addressed each family member with a memory preceded by "your uncle" or "your dad." His grief over the loss of his son Beau is affecting beyond words, even more so when he struggles to find them. It is surely an asset for voters to see a candidate as someone they could turn to in the toughest of moments. And President Obama has done so -- time and again, Biden has worked with his former colleagues to advance the president's agenda, becoming in the process a truly consequential vice president
Like Bill Clinton, Biden savors every aspect of politics -- except, unlike Clinton, raising money. To him the art of persuasion is a joyous pursuit, fueled by a commitment to the average American with whom he still identifies. For Biden, engagement with the maelstrom of politics and its inhabitants is as natural as breathing.
But running for president does not engender fondness in one's opponents. It seems no accident that a spate of recent articles have exhumed the roughest moments in Biden's political past. Feminists with long memories challenge his performance in chairing the Clarence Thomas hearings, asserting that he allowed Thomas and his allies to savage Anita Hill without calling witnesses who could have corroborated her account of sexual harassment. Those who question his judgment as a candidate reach back to the 1988 campaign, when Biden appropriated details from the life of a British politician as his own. Progressives point to Biden's votes in favor of the Iraq war resolution, and a bankruptcy law which favored Delaware-based credit card companies. Other critics resurrect his advice to Obama not to go after Osama bin Laden. Should Biden run, these zombie issues will arise anew.
To be unscripted and unpredictable is in Biden's DNA. Most often this is engaging and fun to watch. But his powers of speech seem over-programmed for output, creating the perpetual risk of a cringemaking lapsus lingua. Though the vice presidency has muted this, historically he has sometimes seemed defensive about his intellect, creating twitchy moments of public insecurity. And the high-stakes debates which lie ahead conjure Biden's 2012 faceoff with Paul Ryan, when Biden squandered his clear edge on substance through an over-caffeinated show of smirks, chuckles and grins, punctuated with eye rolling and shakes of the head.
But the central question is this: what, at its core, is the rationale for choosing Biden over Hillary Clinton? Their bases of support largely overlap, as do their stands on issues -- unlike Bernie Sanders, Biden cannot claim to be fighting Clinton for the soul of the Democratic Party. The real differences are stylistic, and the implicit message of a Biden run would be that she is too damaged to win. This is as hard to articulate as it is to assert with any confidence Biden's long-run superiority as a candidate. Indeed, Kevin McCarthy's dunderheaded admission that the Benghazi committee is a political witch hunt may help stiffen Clinton's support. And among those Democrats who fear that nominating Sanders would be electoral disaster lurks the fear that Biden could widen the self-proclaimed socialist's path to daylight.
In the end, Biden's decision comes down, as it so often does with him, to the human element. He is a 72-year-old man who has overcome great hardship to achieve a truly estimable career at the apex of American politics. Though it may be hard to gaze into the chasm of retirement, for Biden grace and honor are no small things. He surely questions the siren song of poll numbers buoyed by sympathy for his loss, also knowing that the tyranny of state filing deadlines will force a decision far too soon.
In some recess of his mind he must recoil at the thought of a failed campaign and, far worse, at being remembered as a spoiler who weakened the Democrats' chances. And those who watch and wait are left to wonder if a Biden candidacy would be a kindness to his party, or to the man himself.
Richard North Patterson is a novelist and contributing opinion writer.