Joseph Robinette “Beau” Biden III died of brain cancer on May 30, 2015.
Beau Biden was an attorney, an Army officer, Iraq War veteran, Delaware Attorney General, a husband, a brother, a father and the son of Vice President Joe Biden and Mrs. Jill Biden.
In my opinion, Beau Biden was a good man. His father said, “Beau Biden was, quite simply, the finest man any of us have ever known.”
In my opinion, Joe Biden is also a good man.
On Saturday, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote about how a longtime Biden supporter said the vice president had been deeply moved by Beau’s desire for his father to run for president of the United States:
“He was so close to Beau and it was so heartbreaking that, frankly, I thought initially he wouldn’t have the heart,” the supporter, Michael Thornton, a Boston lawyer, said in an interview. “But I’ve had indications that maybe he does want to — and ‘that’s what Beau would have wanted me to do.’”
Dowd adds, “But going through the crucible of the loss of his oldest son, Beau, to brain cancer made the vice president consider the quest again.”
Today, at the same newspaper, Amy Chozick takes another look at the possibility that Joe Biden may be considering a presidential campaign:
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his associates have begun to actively explore a possible presidential campaign, which would upend the Democratic field and deliver a direct threat to Hillary Rodham Clinton, several people who have spoken to Mr. Biden or his closest advisers say.
And:
Mr. Ricchetti, a White House aide in the Clinton administration who is now Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, began talking to donors and supporters in the months before Beau Biden died.
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In recent weeks, those talks, with local elected officials and party leaders, started again, mostly because well-wishers were calling to check on the Biden family. The talk inevitably drifted to 2016, and many of these Democrats urged Mr. Biden to seriously consider getting into the race, said people with knowledge of the talks who agreed to discuss private conversations only anonymously.
Chozick concludes:
Mr. Biden is by no means a virtuoso campaigner. But his entry into the race would add an unbridled, often unscripted passion for the presidency that some Democrats say the ever-cautious Mrs. Clinton at times lacks.
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One Democratic donor with direct knowledge of the overtures from the Biden camp said Mr. Biden had already thought about how he would position himself in the race, delivering an economic message to the left of Mrs. Clinton’s while embracing Obama administration policies, like health care reform, that are widely popular among Democrats.
As I said, Joe Biden is a good man — in every respect of the word.
I would welcome his entry into the race.
Stay tuned.
Lead photo: Jason and Bonnie Grower / Shutterstock.com
