Please,Joe, Don't Run

For years now I've been pushing for a Joe Biden run for the presidency.  Whenever I say Joe would make a better president than any candidate running, even people I like a lot have laughed at the idea.  They scoffed.  I kept pushing.

I've written before about how much I love Joe Biden, even when he's at his most cringe-worthy.  I've inserted him into pieces that aren't about him, making them much longer than they need to be or should be, simply because I wanted him there.  He fits.

He is as flawed as any of us, but the presidency doesn't require perfection.  It's not an application for sainthood.  It requires a big heart--a HUGE heart--along with enough political savvy to never lose sight of goals or of enemies.  Joe has that.

But yesterday, during a speech at an Atlanta synagogue, he was asked about a possible run for president.  He said this:

"Unless I can go to my party and the American people and say that I'm able to devote my whole heart and my whole soul to this endeavor, it would not be appropriate," Biden said. "And everybody talks about a lot of other factors: The other people in the race and whether I can raise the money and whether I can get an organization. That's not the factor. The factor is can I do it? Can my family? 

"...I will be straightforward with you. The most relevant factor in my decision is whether my family and I have the emotional energy to run," Biden told the crowd. "The honest to God answer is I just don't know." 

 It was as much how he said it as what he said. (I'm fogging up again, just writing about it.) Joe Biden's family means everything to him.  He lost his first wife and baby daughter in a terrible car crash in 1972, a little more than a month after he was elected senator in Delaware.  His two sons, Beau and Hunter, spent weeks in the hospital, Joe by their side every day.

On May 30 of this year, Joe's son Beau died at just 46 after a heroic battle with brain cancer.  Beau, Delaware's Attorney General before his illness took him out of public life, showed signs of following in his father's footsteps.   His reputation as a "good guy" pleased Joe no end.  There might have been a Biden dynasty and the people would have benefited.  But it wasn't to be, and now Joe the family man is tired and grieving.   

 A presidential run is grueling, it's exhausting, it's rife with cruelty. The presidency itself is a thankless job, made even more so by factions intent on not just weakening it but destroying it altogether.  The perks--a long-term stay in the nation's mansion, limousines and a veritable airliner as modes of transportation, aides and servants at your beck and call--can't make up for the endless demands for Solomon-like decisions, the gnawing, nightmarish responsibilities as a world leader, the constant opposition to the obligations of serving the peoples' needs.  A person like Joe would take the office of the presidency seriously.  Those decisions would haunt him.  I need to stop asking him to do it.

So give it up, Joe.  Please.  You don't need to be president to be one of the great ones.  You can step into Jimmy Carter's shoes and become our favorite uncle.  The one who speaks to us in quiet tones, reminding us that we have to work at doing the right thing--it doesn't always come naturally.The one who shows us, even if our hearts are breaking, how it can be done.

(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Liberaland)

I love Joe Biden. I mean it. I LOVE Joe Biden

At the TAPS National Military Survivor Seminar and Good Grief Camp in Arlington, Virginia, Joe Biden stood in front of a room full of military families who had lost loved ones in the service of our country.  He stood with his wife, Jill, by his side and spoke from the heart in a voice thick with emotion, talking about his own losses--the deaths of his first wife and 18-month-old daughter in a horrific auto accident when he was but 29 years old and a new senator-elect--but he wasn't looking to one-up that group by telling his own sad story; nor was he asking for pity.

(Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

 He was one of them and he knew how they felt.  At that moment, he dropped the role of Vice President and became just one among many survivor group participants.  He understood how the sudden death of someone you love can send you over the edge, thinking only of ways to relieve the raging, relentless gut pain you feel every time the finality hits:

"It was the first time in my career, in my life, I realized someone could go out -- and I probably shouldn't say this with the press here, but no, but it's more important, you're more important. For the first time in my life, I understood how someone could consciously decide to commit suicide. Not because they were deranged, not because they were nuts; because they had been to the top of the mountain, and they just knew in their heart they would never get there again."

He gave the talk of his life (although he may not know it yet), and out of it came another remarkable confession.  He said when his son Beau finished his tour of duty in the Middle East, he couldn't help but feel guilty.  His son, his beloved son--one of two sons who miraculously survived that horrible accident so many years before--had come home whole when so many other sons and husbands hadn't.  Guilt is not an uncommon feeling among families whose loved ones have survived in places where others have lost their lives, but here was the vice president of the United States, without guile or lofty sense of privilege, confessing feelings rarely spoken out loud by anybody.   (Rachel Maddow played an extended clip of his speech. You can watch it here.)

In his next speech, reported to be against Mitt Romney, it'll be political business as usual.  In the coming days there will be repeats of those moments when his struggle for the right words will fit into the goofy category--fine fodder for the foaming media lightweights.  But he proved his mettle today, in a way that few politicians ever do.

Joe Biden is a good man.  He may be one of our best when it comes to showing us how one can be a career politician and a caring, feeling human being at the same time.  I want him to be the vice president for the next four years, and if he wants the presidency after that, I'll work my heart out for him.

And let no one try to tell me he's not worthy.