Where Joe Biden Is Coming From
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden delivers remarks after receiving the Green Jobs Champion Award during the Good Jobs Green Jobs National Conference at the Washington Hilton April 13, 2015 in Washington, DC.
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesThree years ago, in mid-August 2012, I spent several days in close quarters with Joe Biden for a magazine profile I was writing. In an interview in his cabin aboard Air Force Two, I asked Biden about a topic much discussed back then, and even more so—to put it mildly—at this moment: the possibility that he might run for president in 2016.
“I give you my word as a Biden—a serious answer,” he said. “If the Lord Almighty came down and sat at that coffee table and said, ‘I guarantee you’re the nominee if you say yes now,’ I wouldn’t say yes now. Because I don’t know what the hell four years from now, three years from now, is gonna be like. But I know one thing: I have no intention, if I feel as good and have the same mind-set I have today, of my just saying, ‘Well, you know, I put my years in, and I am proud of what I did. And now, you know, I’m going to play a lot more golf.’”