It may be several months before Joe Biden decides whether he really wants to run for president against an increasing cavalcade of potential Republican candidates – and, before that, under the shadow of Hillary Clinton. But at his first public appearance since confirming that he was mulling a run, the vice-president revealed a politician taking his perceived drawbacks and running with them.
The 72-year-old Biden, who was not even considered as a contender in a major new presidential poll that pitted Clinton against the Republican field on Wednesday, is widely seen as too old and gaffe-prone to make a serious run for the Democratic nomination in 2016.
On the other hand, Biden is credited with providing the human face of an administration known for its chilliness, and he is walking the line between risqué and charming with confidence.
“Hey, look, I may be Irish, but I ain’t stupid,” he joked at a meeting of mayors on Thursday, after being teased during an introduction for sitting behind Barack Obama while pulling appropriate – and sometimes inappropriate – faces during this week’s State of the Union address. “There is nothing like sarcasm to know you are welcome,” he added after being shown the photos Wednesday’s speech to prove it. “It’s hard to keep the appropriate look.”
Since Obama started to hint at a legacy in Tuesday’s speech, Biden has been increasingly unafraid to risk a few sideways digs at the reputation of his boss for failing to build consensus in Washington – especially if it means burnishing his somewhat dated credentials as a peacemaker.
“Have you noticed? Every time there is a crisis, I get sent to the Hill,” Biden told the mayors – a likely reference to his role two years ago in negotiating a budget deal with Republicans that has not been repeated again since.
The less seriously he takes his age, too, the more ageist appear critics who raise it. “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are? I’m 42,” he quipped on Thursday.
But Biden remains determined to be taken seriously as a contender for higher office, despite two previous attempts and his association with a president whose approval numbers have been down more often than up.
“Yes, there is a chance,” he told Bill Clinton’s former adviser George Stephanopoulos during an interview for ABC on Wednesday, referring to a possible run for the bigger office in the White House. “But I haven’t made my mind up about that. We’ve got a lot of work to do between now and then. There’s plenty of time.”
Early 2016 prognosticators may already be selling the vice-president short. A Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Thursday asked how Clinton – and no other potential Democratic candidate – rated against the emerging Republican field. Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Mitt Romney, who have been testing the waters for an establishment slot with donors – and each other – topped the Republican field.
Public Policy Polling released the results of a separate survey on Thursday, with Clinton taking 58% of support, compared to 13% for Joe Biden, among what the firm identified as potential voters in Pennsylvania, a historically blue-collar state.
Before Thursday’s audience of mayors from largely Democratic and often working-class cities, Biden’s mix of blunt speaking and self-deprecation goes down a storm and could serve as a platform to appeal to the party’s base in a way that both Obama and Clinton have found difficult.
Just as his appeal for bipartisanship is more convincing than it is coming from Obama, Biden’s middle-class background may lend him more credibility than Clinton when it comes to discussing the financial pain felt by many ordinary Americans.
“If you are like me, living on the salary you earn and nothing else, try sending your kids to college,” he told the conference of mayors. “When I had to do my financial disclosure statement, the Washington Post had a headline ‘Vice-president enters office with the fewest assets of any candidate in history’. I assume they were talking financial.”
Yet when Clinton said in interviews around her memoirs about her time in the State Department that she and her husband had left the White House “dead broke”, she was forced to apologise for being out of touch.
Nevertheless, the vice-president may still do the Clintons a favour by running: he would present a plausible enough candidate to give Democrats a sense that they chose Clinton, rather than inherited her.
The opinion polling and conventional wisdom in Washington insists Joe Biden doesn’t stand a chance, but that may not stop plenty of party insiders from encouraging him.
