WASHINGTON -- For about two decades, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Joe Biden have collaborated and competed, shared more than a dozen aides, fought for a presidential nomination and then served together in the Cabinet of the man who beat them both.
Now, as Biden considers challenging for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, their long and tangled relationship is being tested anew.
They've been linked in presidential politics before, and not just in the 2008 campaign when they lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama. In late 2011, when Obama's re-election looked uncertain, his advisers secretly polled whether to consider replacing the vice president with Clinton, who was then secretary of state.
Yet despite the prospect of a face-off in the Democratic primaries, aides and colleagues say the relationship between Clinton and Biden remains relatively warm.
"They have a genuine friendship," said former Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Nebraska Democrat who has known Biden and Clinton for decades. "If Biden becomes a candidate, you could probably put the sun and the moon between them. But it's not going to be because he lacks respect or admiration for Hillary Clinton."
In June, Clinton flew to Delaware for the funeral Mass for Biden's son Beau, sitting near the front of the church with her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
She then got on a flight to Connecticut for the wedding of former Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan, whose decision to forgo a job on a potential Biden run in favor of the top policy job on Clinton's campaign served as another reminder that their rivalry is never far from the surface.
That many of Biden's top advisers have left him to work for either Clinton or Obama remains a sore point for the vice president, said several of his aides, who requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to comment publicly. Sullivan, who had worked for Clinton previously at the State Department, made clear that his first loyalty was to her, the aides said.
As talk of a Biden challenge grew louder this month, Clinton said in New Hampshire: "I have the highest regard and affection for him. We should all let the vice president be with his family and make whatever decision he believes is right."
Their alliance dates to Bill Clinton's presidency in the late 1990s, when Biden used his influence as the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee to help pass legislation on crime, gun violence and domestic abuse. Years later, when Hillary Clinton was preparing to enter the Senate, one of her first stops was Biden's office.
Biden's former Senate aides said Clinton wasn't a frequent visitor in the subsequent years; they sat on separate committees and focused on different issues. But Biden kept a photograph in a prominent spot on his office bookshelf: Hillary Clinton laughing while Biden whispered in her left ear and Bill Clinton whispered in her right.
"There's no woman like Hillary Clinton," Biden said in 2013 as they shared the stage at an awards ceremony.
But they haven't always agreed -- most notably on Iraq. When Clinton unveiled a plan to cut off funding to Iraq's military, Biden argued that it would be counterproductive. Biden had advocated his own plan for a decentralized Iraq.
"I think it would be a disaster if it is her plan," he told ABC's Diane Sawyer in 2007.
In the Obama administration, they met often for breakfast at Biden's official residence. Biden, "always the gentleman," would meet Clinton at the car and walk her to a sunny nook off the porch, she recalled in her book Hard Choices.
When they faced off in the 2008 campaign, Biden made a point to say he wasn't running against Clinton, adding that he was "running to lead the free world."
"I don't know," Clinton communications director Jen Palmieri recently told reporters asking about Biden's prospects. "He's gonna decide. He said he would decide."
A Section on 08/18/2015