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As prominent and respected men are being taken down right and left for their gross and often criminal behavior, I have been wondering about Joe Biden. It’s not that I think Joe Biden is a terrible person – I just think he can’t keep his hands to himself. I seriously doubt he’s propositioned or harassed interns or coworkers, but I’d be willing to bet that more than a few female coworkers have felt uncomfortable with how handsy Joe Biden was and is. I was reminded of that as I sat here and read Vanity Fair’s exclusive with Biden. They interviewed him as he starts promotion of Promise Me, Dad, his memoir of his time as Vice President, and how he dealt with his son Beau’s death. Beau’s passing is the biggest reason why Biden didn’t run for president in 2016 and it’s clear from this interview that Biden is still grieving quite deeply for (frankly) his favorite son. You can read the full VF piece here – he talks at length about Beau, about Hillary Clinton, and about whether he will ever run for president again.

A lovely Obama story: True to his informal persona, Biden usually refers to Barack Obama in the book not as “the president” but as “Barack,” and portrays their relationship as an initially uncertain alliance that developed into a genuinely warm and deep friendship. One of the few people outside the family privy to the severity of Beau’s condition, Obama served as Biden’s confidant and grief counselor, and even made an offer (never taken up) to assist the family out of his own pocket if the going got tough for them financially during Beau’s ordeal. Biden has never been a wealthy man; he is that rare creature in Washington who earned his living from a government salary the whole time he served, for 36 years as a senator and 8 years as vice president.

Biden would have run if not for Beau falling ill: “No question. I had planned on running, and I wasn’t running against Hillary or Bernie or anybody else. Honest to God, I thought that I was the best suited for the moment to be president.”

Hillary told him personally that she was running: Shortly before the Donilon meeting, Hillary Clinton had paid her own visit to the Naval Observatory, to deliver the news in person that she was going to run for president. She asked Biden if he would also be doing so. He told her he was undecided, but that if he did he would not run a negative campaign against her. Biden writes that she promised the same. “Although some of our supporters can get out of hand at times,” he quotes her as saying, “it would not be me.” In the same period, Obama, too, had been trying to suss out Biden’s intentions, at their weekly one-on-one lunches at the White House. The president, in Biden’s telling, dropped heavy hints that, for the good of party unity, the vice president should stand down; Clinton’s political organization was formidable, and it was her turn. Obama further cited the excitement with which he personally was anticipating life after holding high office, and asked Biden, “Joe, have you focused on that? How do you want to spend the rest of your life?”

He didn’t think Hillary really wanted to run: As for Hillary Clinton, Biden writes that he felt a “twinge of sadness” for her as she departed the Naval Observatory the day of her visit. “The sage political analysts would say she was probably on her way to a historic victory—the first woman to win the White House,” he writes. “But she did not evince much joy at the prospect of running. I may have misread her entirely that morning, but she seemed to me like a person propelled by forces not entirely of her own making.” I I asked Biden to elaborate on this passage. “Everyone thinks it was just raw ambition on her part,” he said. “I think she was sort of a prisoner of history. First woman who had a better-than-even chance of getting the nomination. First woman, relative to the Republican field, who had a better-than-even chance of being president. But there’s a lot of baggage, fair and unfair, and there was no illusion on her part—this wasn’t going to be a Marquess of Queensberry fight. And so I never got the sense that there was any joy in her campaign. Maybe it’s me, but I find joy in doing this.”

Whether he’ll run in 2020: “I haven’t decided to run,” he said, “but I’ve decided I’m not going to decide not to run. We’ll see what happens.”

[From Vanity Fair]

Joe Biden is 74 years old right now, soon to be 75 next month. He would be 78 years old if elected in 2020. Is that too old? Is it ageist to say I think it’s too old? There are a million reasons why Joe should run: he’s genuinely middle class and he appeals to middle class and working class voters; he’s funny, humble and relatable; he’s interesting and he never comes across like a pre-programmed robot; he actually fights for a lot of great issues. But there are so many reasons for him not to run too: he’s still grieving; he’s too old; he would have issues connecting to young voters; he’s a gaffe machine; and I really do worry that some women will come out and say Biden tried to give them massages. Still, America elected an admitted p-ssy grabber, so we’re living in a brave new world.

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Photos courtesy of Getty.