The biggest problems for the GOP in the current Presidential race are too numerous to list. The most pressing one for the Democrats, apart from their primary candidate carrying worrisome scars, is that there’s no suitable second challenger by normal standards. When Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battled in 2008, the party had a fallback should one of them take ill or be knocked out for some unforeseen reason. Elizabeth Warren could have been that other option this time but chose not to run. At present, small-state Socialist Bernie Sanders is the safety net.

In the wake of the tragic death of his son, Beau, Vice President Joe Biden has been urged by many Democrats to run and provide a working-class counterpart to the big-money politics of the Clintons. It seems like something he really, really shouldn’t do. Biden certainly offers the authenticity that our Reality TV era demands (despite being a career politician), but someone who’ll be 74 at the time of the 2017 inauguration and has a habit of misspeaking and a belly full of grief probably shouldn’t be your other slam-dunk candidate. That’s a weak bench.

Gawker pointed me to a 1974 Washingtonian profile of Biden written by future sensationalist Kitty Kelley at an inflection point in the Senator’s life–the aftermath of the auto-wreck death of his first wife and baby daughter. The article, notable for Biden’s discomfort at the time with Roe v. Wade, is a very good piece throughout. 

An excerpt:

His 29-year-old sister Valerie and her husband Bruce have moved into the Senator’s house to take care of the children. He commutes from Wilmington every day to be with them when they wake up in the morning and go to bed at night. They like visiting him here, and it is not unusual to see two little blondes streaking through Biden’s reception room. Both seem adjusted to the loss. Beau, now five years old, explains the situation with simplicity: “My father works in his office with the Senators and my mother is in heaven.”

***

Named one of the ten best-dressed men in the Senate, Joe Biden looks like Robert Redford’s Great Gatsby in natty pin-striped suits, elegant silk ties, and black tassled loafers. He dresses rich. “I’m a suit-and-tie kind of guy,” he says. “I’ve been this way all my life. I even wore a tie in college. My wife thought I dressed too conservatively and so she would buy a lot of my clothes which is probably the only reason I look so good.” He looks like a Senator—complete with receding hairline and gravelly voice. He has immense self-confidence. He doesn’t smoke and doesn’t drink. Although he makes deprecating noises about some senators and calls Congress an antiquated nineteenth-century institution, he still is proud of his position. He thoroughly enjoys being a politician. “I am proud to be a politician. There is no other walk of life which can do more good for mankind than politics. It influences every thing that happens to the American people. You might think I’m off the wall when I say this, but I believe what Plato said 2,000 years ago: ‘The penalty good men pay for not becoming involved in politics is being governed by men worse than themselves.”

He defines politics as power. “And, whether you like it or not, young lady,” he says, leaning over his desk to shake a finger at me, “us cruddy politicians can take away that First Amendrnent of yours if we want to.” There’s no time to pursue the point—Biden is summoned o the floor for a vote. On the way over to the Capitol he channels the conversation away from politics, talking about his family: “This is really a big deal for them. I’m the only Senator any of us have ever known. We never even knew anyone who knew a Senator before. At first my dad tried to talk me into running for governor but I told him I didn’t want to be a damn old administrator. I wanted to come to Washington and get something accomplished. He calls me champ now. He and Mike Mansfield are probably the most decent men I’ve ever known. My dad never went to college [he’s an automobile sales manager in Wilmington] and he had never been involved in politics until I started campaigning. But he loves it.”•