The old happy warrior is on the campaign path again.
Just as President Donald Trump was pulling out of the Paris climate accord, an old antagonist – a man even older than the 70-year-old President – was stoking hopes among his supporters that he would challenge Mr. Trump in the 2020 election. Former vice-president Joe Biden formed a political action committee with this rhetorical blast, clearly directed across the bow of the Trump White House:
"It's time to reach deep into the soul of this country and once again give everyone – and I mean everyone – the opportunity to achieve the impossible," Mr. Biden, 74, said in announcing his new effort. ''It's time to look beyond 24-hour news cycles and 140-character arguments. It's time to treat each other with dignity and respect."
A country still wondering what Mr. Trump meant when he employed the non-word "covfefe" in a tweet earlier this week had no trouble discerning what Mr. Biden meant with his comment. He'd clearly like to run for president, and surely doesn't want to take himself out of the running.
"It's always easier to keep options open than to close them down," said Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University in Iowa, site of the first caucus of the 2020 presidential campaign. "This allows him a course of action without committing him to anything. But it also prevents the Democrats from making the generational transition that the Republicans had."
This Biden initiative, which surprised political analysts with its timing and force, comes at a juncture when the Democrats are motivated to oppose Mr. Trump but lack a clear party leader except Mr. Biden, whose move Thursday sought to assure that no one else could fill that vacuum.
"There is a total void within the Democratic Party," Peter D. Hart, a veteran Democratic pollster, said in an interview. "Joe Biden received the best 'feeling thermometer' scores at the end of the second Obama term. People keep saying: 'I like Joe Biden. Joe Biden is a good person. '"
Indeed, in a profession where friends come and go but enemies accumulate, Mr. Biden has a remarkably large stable of allies that seems to be growing as he ages – an asset when you consider that the former Delaware senator would be 78 at Inauguration Day 2020. That would make him the oldest American president – but still younger than Winston Churchill was when, at a Westminster Hall birthday celebration at age 80, the prime minister told his parliamentary colleagues, "I hope I still have some service to render." Paul Doumer was president of France at 75 when he was assassinated in 1932. William Lyon Mackenzie King was 73 when he completed more than 21 years as prime minister of Canada in 1948.
Mr. Biden – who was elected to the Senate at age 29 and was the fifth-youngest senator in American history before becoming the second-oldest vice-president – seems ageless: vigourous in speech, nimble in campaign settings, energetic even in receiving lines like the one that quickly formed when he turned up at a formal dinner stuffed with fervent but dispirited Democrats at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum last month. Like the old expression that once exasperated opponents of Richard Nixon, who in contrast gained enemies as he aged, Mr. Biden, who gave a rousing commencement address at Cornell University a few weeks later, seems tanned and ready.
"If you look to the basics of the process that will yield a Democratic nominee in 2020, Biden has all the components: experience, a well-developed national network, a fluency in the issues, a zest for campaigning," said Michael Feldman, a consultant who is a veteran of the two successful Bill Clinton presidential campaigns and the unsuccessful campaign of Al Gore. "When you apply these tests to newcomers to presidential politics, they're all unknowns. But these are the things Joe Biden can do.
"He has extraordinary strengths," Mr. Feldman continued, before adding, as a caution: "These are strengths on paper, three years out …"
Then again, sometimes newcomers – Barack Obama, for example, in 2008, or Mr. Kennedy in 1960 and Jimmy Carter in 1976 – have such dazzling skills, plus shiny new appeal and fresh vision, that they reflect the contemporary zeitgeist and capture the public imagination.
Mr. Biden has had, and lost, allure before. He was marked as a coming star when he first took the oath of office as a senator, and within a dozen years was considered a formidable presidential possibility. His 1988 presidential campaign began with enormous promise – many analysts, especially the pollster Patrick J. Caddell, the brilliant enfant terrible of the Democratic Party at the time – believed he was the ideal candidate to capture the baby-boom vote at the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency. Fortified with a dream team of consultants and advisers who saw Mr. Biden as Robert Kennedy redux, the Biden campaign sank under charges he plagiarized a speech from British Labour leader Neil Kinnock. Mr. Biden ran again in 2008, winning only 638 votes in the critical New Hampshire Primary but, more important, winning the admiration of Obama, who chose him as his running mate and gave him an unusually public platform as vice-president for eight years.
At a minimum, Mr. Biden has established himself as the principal Democratic pugilist in next year's midterm congressional elections – a role former vice-president Nixon perfected in 1966, when as a defeated presidential candidate he travelled the country on behalf of Republican House and Senate candidates, winning friends, earning political chits and keeping himself in the political eye.
"Biden can be a big factor in 2018," said Mr. Hart, the Democratic pollster. "He can energize the base and extend it into blue collar communities. He'll be a tremendous asset in 2018 and maybe beyond. It is a long way from here to the 2020 presidential campaign. But a party hoping to do well in congressional elections couldn't get a better piece of news than this."
David Shribman