“Ouch,” the Republican National Committee said on its blog Monday afternoon.
President Barack Obama’s press spokesman, Josh Earnest, had just finished his daily briefing. He’d had to deal with the now-raging reports of Vice President Joe Biden’s heightened consideration of running for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Earnest related that of course Obama holds his own vice president in the highest regard. To illustrate, he recalled that Obama had always said that picking Biden as his running mate was the smartest decision he’d ever made in politics.
Smarter than picking Hillary Clinton as secretary of state? It was Jonathan Karl of ABC who asked that obvious question. And Earnest proceeded to say that Obama had a high regard for Hillary as well, of course.
The GOP’s chortling “ouch” was in feigned sympathy for the disrespected Hillary.
There are two notions suddenly growing stronger in American politics. One is that Donald Trump may have staying power. The other is that Biden might actually run against Clinton.
These notions are not altogether unrelated.
Biden is a fine and genuine man with a rich and admirable, if tragic, biography. He has unparalleled experience and bona fides in progressive service to the working class.
His Democratic credibility dates to his Pennsylvania Catholic roots and his election to the U.S. Senate from Delaware in 1972 at the age of 29.
He chaired the Judiciary Committee hearings on Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. He gained international credibility as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
His historic vulnerability is that he is an incorrigible motormouth and showoff who is so chronically deficient in rhetorical inhibition that he is apt to make an indelicate or absurd pronouncement at any moment.
Obama spent his presidency loving him and wincing about him. And Obama was not alone.
As it happens on the Republican side, Trump is finding great currency at the moment in being a motormouth and showoff so chronically deficient in rhetorical inhibition that he is apt to make an indelicate or absurd pronouncement at any moment.
That is, in fact, Trump’s shtick and strength. It tends to inoculate him against the traditional wounds of political gaffe-making.
He wins by speaking recklessly because many people are fatigued by politicians speaking cautiously. There’s a thinking that, if you are afraid to say anything, then you similarly are afraid to do anything, and that somebody, by George, needs to do something.
To that extent, Biden is something of a Democratic Trump.
Can you begin to fathom a Biden-Trump debate? That hair against those blazing white teeth? A blowhard bellowing over a blowhard and vice versa? A moderator giving up on any rules? A timekeeper throwing away his clock?
So here is what appears to be going on with Biden: He has wanted to be president for a period spanning five decades. He knows himself to hold the credentials and skills for the job. But he is 73, and his time seems to have passed. He was willing to concede to the hungrier and more inevitable Hillary.
But then two things happened: His beloved dying son, Beau, urged him to run, and Hillary ran into serious problems owing partly to her own missteps but mostly to a cynical contrived Republican assault and the media’s complicity.
That is to say that Hillary has done nothing actually wrong on those personal emails, but that the issue won’t go away and advances the pre-existing image of her as unworthy of trust.
So Joe, ever the good guy, is going through a growingly serious contemplation of honoring his beloved son and seeking to rescue his beloved party.
There are things emerging about his potential candidacy that, while true, are largely irrelevant.
The main one is that Biden believes — rightly — that, by his background and essence, he is more capable than Hillary of leading a Democratic war against growing income inequality.
That’s the main theme of Democrats currently. And it’s why Biden had that meeting the other day with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the leading voice of that theme.
But that has to do with a byproduct, not the real story.
The real story is that Biden would run predominantly for one reason, which is that Hillary could become so damaged that his party would actually have a compelling need for him.
So Joe says he’ll decide by the end of the summer, which is Sept. 23.
The drama between now and then is not his, but Hillary’s.
Can she somehow slay this email dragon? Can she reverse the trend or at the least stop the hemorrhaging?
What Biden is doing is attending to the contingency. He’s preparing his cape for a crusade to save the day, should it come to that.
The complication for Hillary, and for Joe, and for Democrats, is that the consequence of the email folderol may not be any more determined by Sept. 23 than it is now.
John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.