Biden’s Unified Theory of Biden

Joe Biden was so disciplined during the vice presidential debate, so brief (under five minutes!) in his speech bidding farewell to his son Beau and other members of his Delaware National Guard unit heading to Iraq, that his inner self sought some release, some way of saying, "Hey, the old Joe's still alive." "The very thing people like best about me at home is that I don't have to pick every word and parse everything," he says the day after the debate, at a Wilmington, Dela., coffee shop. "And if I say something politically incorrect, they know my motive is good."

His tone is wistful as he explains how the new 24/7 coverage is draining all spontaneity from politics: "It's a shame. It requires you to withhold." So he doesn't, and proceeds to spill on subjects ranging from the demands he made before agreeing to go on the ticket, to his feelings about Barack Obama and John McCain, to a confession and Bidenesque rationalization of his own weaknesses. No gaffes, but the level of detail won't thrill the Obamaniacal control freaks in Chicago.

He was happy with the St. Louis debate, of course, and trying to be gracious: "I liked her [Sarah Palin]. When our families met, it was congenial, with none of the tension that's sometimes in the air." But he doesn't think the event was terribly relevant. "The real issue is John and Barack."

About that catch in his throat: in the moment, he "could picture Beau in the bed" after the 1972 car accident that killed Biden's first wife, Neilia, and their baby girl and critically injured his young sons. Now Beau, the 39-year-old attorney general of Delaware, was off to war, a judge advocate general traveling to obscure regions of Iraq, where the road isn't exactly the safest place to be. The memory of being a single parent mixed with worries about Beau to create "a lot of bundled emotions. It surprised me. I was hoping nobody noticed." Only 70 million or so did.

Biden compares running for vice president to being a "cicada," in which the only time you surface publicly (if you're not Sarah Palin) is when chosen, at the debate and if you win. His description of his reluctance to accept Obama's offer to go on the ticket is unconfirmable because the Democratic presidential candidate isn't talking. But it goes like this:

When Obama phoned in June to tell him he wanted to vet him, Biden said OK, but that he might well decline. He consulted with longtime advisers Ted Kaufman and Ron Klain and went back and forth on whether the vice presidency was really the best place for him to have influence with an Obama administration. It helped that all spring Obama had called him every other week or so to get his thinking on varied matters (like how to question Gen. David Petraeus when he testified). They both knew that the role of the veep under Obama would not be like Dick Cheney's, but the terms remained to be worked out.