Joe Biden won't slow down after official exit

• At 73, Joe Biden is expected to remain active in the Democratic Party.
• His role could involve serving as an adviser, lecturer and cheerleader for down-ticket candidates.
• The vice president's speech is Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention.

After he suffered two nearly fatal brain aneurysms and outlived his two children and his first wife ...

After he spent 36 years in the U.S. Senate and mounted two failed presidential bids ...

After he became, according to prominent scholars, one of the most productive vice presidents in American history ... Joe Biden has every reason in the world to take a breather and ride off into the sunset.

But that's not Sheriff Joe's MO.

"What I plan on doing is staying engaged in all the issues I'm engaged in now," the vice president said in a phone interview from his Greenville home Friday after returning from a week in Australia and New Zealand.

Biden added that while he has no "intention" of running for public office again, he won't formally rule it out.

"If something happens and it's appropriate for me to be engaged," he said, trailing off.

The Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this week is a reminder that the vice president will soon exit the "official" upper echelon of the party, following more than four decades of steadfast service.

That's not the end of the road. President Barack Obama has called on Biden to lead a national “Moonshot” initiative, with a $1 billion budget, to eradicate cancer worldwide. Biden is also expected to remain active in the party by serving in an unofficial advisory role, lecturing across the globe and stumping for down-ticket candidates, according to his family, friends and colleagues.

The vice president said Friday that he hasn't "approached anybody about having to make a living." But he plans to continue advocating for women's rights, criminal justice reform, quality education and other issues central to his platform, explaining that he measures public servants' sincerity and devotion by their willingness to remain involved in their private lives. Biden said his wife, Jill, is weighing an offer to head up an international organization focused on helping women, which he declined to name.

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He also said he is in preliminary discussions with the University of Delaware about collaborating on a facility, possibly a vice presidential library. In 2014, Biden donated nearly 2,000 boxes of his Senatorial papers to UD.

A UD spokesman would only confirm that the university has been in contact with Biden about "potential connections and partnerships."

Democrats would be wise to capitalize on Biden's high approval ratings after he leaves office, political insiders say. Polls show that Americans consider the self-described "poorest man in Congress" more trustworthy than presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. In multiple interviews, one character trait is invoked repeatedly to sum up Biden’s lasting impact on the party: conciliatory.

"I would bet a very large sum that Biden would've beaten Trump by a much larger margin (than Clinton),” said longtime political analyst Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.

At age 73, Biden is perhaps the closest he's ever been to achieving his presidential ambitions. But he’s moving on.

"I had planned on running for president and life intervened," he said Friday. "I made the right decision for my family, for my children. I made the right decision across the board. I have no regrets."

When the elder statesman takes the podium Wednesday it will be to trumpet Hillary Clinton's "experience and steadiness," her ability to "bring people together to tackle the big challenges and get results," according to a statement from the Democratic National Convention Committee.

It's as if the vice president were describing his own legacy. Saddled with an increasingly polarized political system, he is among a dying breed of lawmakers who gets things done by relating to his opponents as human beings, not as products of an evil empire.

"At a time when Americans are dissatisfied with most government institutions, Biden has made his vice presidency consequential to an extent never before achieved," according to Joel Goldstein, a Saint Louis University law professor and a leading authority on the United States vice presidency.

“It’s hard to imagine anybody on the scene right now who exceeds Vice President Biden in his appreciation of and his ability to practice bipartisan governance,” Goldstein said.

"He's old school," added Richard Harpootlian, former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. "He believes people came to Washington to move the ball forward."

"What we're going to miss about Biden," the sharp-tongued attorney continued, "is his ability to talk in a reasonable, rational way to our party or the other party."

Asked to list the accomplishments he is most proud of, Biden brings it back to Delaware. He discusses his role in helping the Democratic Party gain a foothold here and his efforts to secure the return of federal land at Cape Henlopen.

On the international stage, Biden points to his advocacy of U.S. and NATO intervention in the Bosnian War in the mid-1990s, and, more recently, negotiating closely with leaders in Iraq, Cypress and Ukraine.

Taken together, a "dysfunctional" Congress and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump are "having a real impact on the conduct of our foreign policy," he said.

He provided the following anecdote closer to home: In trying to garner support for Merrick Garland, Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court, Biden said he met with a dozen Republican senators.

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"All of the 12 I spoke to said, 'You're right, Joe. I know you're right. But I'll be killed if I do it,'" recalled Biden.

The ability to come together is "the single most needed attribute for the next president," he said.

Biden is a bundle of contradictions that somehow manages to gel. He is a blue-collar populist and foreign policy wonk who embodies the Washington establishment yet retains the folksy demeanor of the scrappy Scranton, Pennsylvania, car salesmen marking his youth.

Dismissed by some, Biden became Obama's dependable right arm, dispatched to defuse high-stakes conflicts on Capitol Hill and around the globe.

And, by no mean feat, he did it largely scandal-free. (Biden voted for the Iraq War in 2002, but later admitted his “mistake.”)

In digging for common ground, Biden is fond of saying that he may question the judgment of others, but not their motives. That attitude — of looking beyond what Biden terms the "caricature of a person" — has helped him earn trust on both sides of the aisle.

Clinton, his former Democratic rival, has credited Biden with helping to save the auto industry and rebuilding the economy.

"If I know Joe, he will always be on the front lines, always fighting for us all," she said after Biden announced in October that he would not challenge her.

Like the Kennedy clan, Biden has suffered multiple personal setbacks. The most recent was the loss of his son Beau, Delaware's former attorney general, to brain cancer last year.

“Beau is what gets him up in the morning,” said longtime Biden supporter, the Rev. Samuel Lathem, former president of the Delaware AFL-CIO. “Beau gives him the determination and fortitude to lick this disease.”

Restless and resilient, Biden pivots. Then he pivots again.

"The greatest gift is the ability to forget," he once told an audience in Detroit. "To forget the bad things and focus on the good."

Today, he is bringing his collaborative spirit to the silos of academia, research laboratories and hospitals worldwide to find a cure for cancer. On Friday, Biden spoke of the need to create an independent center to coordinate the effort. Highly competitive and fractured, the cancer research climate resembles “a group of lions and bears who pee all over their territory,” Lathem said.

Delaware’s cancer incidence rate is among the highest in the country; nearly 2,000 residents die from the disease each year.

Said Sabato: “Would there be a better legacy than cracking the cancer curse?”

But Biden’s Cancer Moonshot is neither a consolation prize nor a replacement legacy, according to Valerie Biden Owens, the vice president's younger sister and former campaign manager.

Biden is not wringing his hands over what might have been, she said.

"It's a disappointment, but he has his whole life ahead of him,” his sister continued. “He's not looking for the title of president. He's looking to influence the culture and direction of our country."

'The last guy in the room'

Back in May, U.S. Sen. Chris Coons accompanied the man who used to occupy his seat to deliver the commencement address at Delaware State University.

"You need the head to know the difference between knowledge and judgment," the vice president intoned. "Ambition without perspective can be a killer when reality intrudes."

"And it will intrude."

After Biden finished, sheets of rain drenched him as he cracked jokes about ruined hair and shoes with some of the 700 graduates. He lingered in the downpour until the last student had a chance to snap a photo.

"There was not one moment when it seemed there was anywhere else he wanted to be," Coons remembered.

Biden's got the gift of the gab — as a student at Archmere Academy, he recited Yeats and Emerson at night to overcome stuttering —which means he inevitably blurts out something he's not supposed to.

In 2007, he was criticized for characterizing then-Sen. Obama as a "mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean." In the following presidential election, Biden called then-GOP hopeful Mitt Romney "etch-a-sketchy" and told a largely black crowd that his economic policy would "put y'all back in chains." More recently, Biden endorsed same-sex marriage before his boss did.

A source of momentary embarrassment, Biden's off-the-cuff remarks usually blow over, according to G. Terry Madonna, a veteran Pennsylvania pollster.

"You can disagree with his position but you can't help but like him," he said.

At campaign events, Biden is often the last man standing as ice cream melts and nerves become frayed, his supporters say. One South Carolina university had to turn the lights off on him, recalled Lathem, who was part of the Draft Biden Super PAC for the 2016 election.

In the Oval Office, the vice president has jockeyed to be "the last guy in the room on every major decision," Biden has told reporters.

"There is no power in the vice president at all," he said Friday. "It's all reflective power. The only way it works is if the House, the Senate and policymakers know that when you speak you speak for the president."

Obama and Biden have strengthened their relationship over the last seven years, in contrast to former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Obama delivered the eulogy at Beau Biden’s funeral and offered to help his second-in-command pay the family’s bills, Biden has said. Several key members of Biden’s staff have been promoted to serve the president.

Biden is “a credit to the President,” U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) told The News Journal in a recent email. “He left the Senate with a significant legacy of achievement.”

A freshman senator from Illinois, Obama came to rely on Biden’s institutional knowledge and troubleshooting abilities, according to former Delaware Republican Governor and Congressman Mike Castle.

A one-time chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committee, Biden presided over contentious hearings on Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court in 1991.

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As vice president, he has lobbied Congress on several controversial proposals, including the 2009 economic stimulus program, the drawdown of troops in Iraq and gun control legislation. Earlier this year, Biden helped broker the historic reconciliation agreement between Turkey and Israel.

During a recent “60 Minutes’” interview with Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence, Lesley Stahl asked Pence if he planned to mirror former Vice President Dan Quayle’s dissolving-into-the-drapes tenure or Biden’s active approach to budget wrangling and negotiating foreign policy.

Pence chose the latter.

Not since former Vice President Walter Mondale, who also lost a child to brain cancer, has a vice president been such a trusted adviser, said Goldstein, the vice presidential scholar. Remarkably, he added, Biden came on the heels of Cheney’s perceived imperial vice presidency.

Flashing his trademark grin, Biden leverages his enduring relationships from his time in the Senate. In 1994, he passed the largest crime bill in U.S. history and the Violence Against Women Act with the support of Strom Thurmond, the one-time segregationist South Carolina senator.

Biden and Republican Sen. Jesse Helms from North Carolina negotiated the chemical weapons ban treaty in 1997. More recently, the vice president brokered a deal with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, to avoid the "fiscal cliff" of spending cuts and tax increases in 2013.

Whether he is advocating for environmental protection, college aid or strategic arms limits, Biden listens to his opponents with empathy, said his close friend Ted Kaufman, former U.S. senator from Delaware.

“In Washington, the single most important thing is trust,” Biden’s former chief of staff continued, “the ability to make a deal and stand by your word.”

Delaware was a 'gift'

The Biden name is as inextricably tied to the First State as the DuPont dynasty.

Delaware historian Carol E. Hoffecker has called Biden the most influential Delawarean in history behind Caesar Rodney, who led the state during the American Revolution and signed the Declaration of Independence.

At age 29, Biden was elected  to the U.S. Senate in a stunning political upset of Republican incumbent J. Caleb Boggs that changed the culture of politics in Delaware. That same year, in 1972, former Republican President Richard Nixon won his second term in one of the largest landslides in U.S. history.

Biden’s campaign trifecta focused on the withdrawal from Vietnam, environmental stewardship and civil rights. His family swarmed all three counties. Valerie managed the effort (and every campaign since), youngest brother Frank worked as volunteer coordinator, middle brother James was finance chair and Biden’s mother, Jean, organized the coffee klatches. Biden’s distinguished father, Joseph Biden Sr., was often mistaken for the actual candidate, remembers Valerie.

Delaware was a “gift” to the former New Castle County councilman, she said, noting that the state is only a two-hour drive from stem to stern. “It was a platform. It offered Joe the opportunity without money, prestige or political power to be known. And he’s never forgotten.”

A rising star, Biden took his first oath of office at Beau’s bedside, one month after a car accident had killed his first wife, Neilia and their 13-month-old daughter. It was in another hospital bed 42 years later that Beau reportedly urged his father to run for president.

The verdict is out on whether Biden would have clinched the party nomination this year. Critics argue that he was neither far enough to the left nor fresh-faced enough to succeed. Proponents point to Biden’s ability to pull voters from Clinton and former candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, possibly leaving Clinton without a majority of pledged delegates.

As recently as a couple weeks ago, someone stopped Timothy Mullaney, New Castle County chief administrative officer, and begged, “Is there any way you can get Joe to run?”

“I think that train has left the station,” Beau Biden’s former chief of staff replied.

“I think (Joe Biden) feels in his heart that he would be the ideal candidate at this time in the country’s life,” Mullaney continued. “If Beau’s health had held out, Beau would be running for governor and, knowing what I know, he would’ve been disappointed if his dad was not running.”

His dad offered the following explanation to Bloomberg News in December: “Beau was my soul.”

“You’ve got to get through the first Thanksgiving, the first empty chair, the first Christmas, the first smell of spring,” added Biden, who knows something about missed opportunities.

Battling two historic candidates, he withdrew from the 2008 Democratic presidential primary after a poor showing in Iowa. In 1987, he dropped out of the presidential race after reports surfaced that he had plagiarized a portion of a speech and part of a law school paper. (The episode came back to bite him recently when Melania Trump was accused of lifting lines from first lady Michelle Obama during her convention speech).

Rather than launch a quixotic presidential run, Biden will end on a high note deserving of a victory lap around the Wells Fargo Center, his supporters say. Several noted they plan to sit this convention out.

"If Joe were the candidate, I would’ve withstood any crowd for him,” said Sonia Sloan of Wilmington, a close family friend and campaign fundraiser.

Harpootlian expects Biden's charisma to overshadow Clinton this week.

"Dare I say there will be a lot more people wanting to go to (his) cocktail parties than Hillary's," he said.

For the first time in his career, Biden is leaving full-time public service, a source of sustenance in his darkest moments. He can abandon the three-hour round-trip Amtrak ride, during which he dissected legislation. Perhaps we’ll see even more of him at July 4 parades, jamborees and at Capriotti’s, since Biden said he and Jill have no plans to abandon their primary home in Greenville.

Wilmington lawyer and former News Journal reporter Chuck Durante recalls meeting Biden in 1972 at the Bridgeville Kiwanis Club. The candidate promised that if voters sent him to Washington he would be a workhorse — not a show horse.

After a decompression period, Biden will “reconnect and find that his true self is just as vibrant and valuable without the official title,” Durante said. “He’s not the kind of guy who is going to jump on corporate boards and indiscriminately sell his name.”

"I haven't started thinking granular about the future," Biden said Friday. "I have so much work to do between now and then."

In gearing up for Biden’s last campaign in 2012, Kaufman mailed the vice president a quote from Pope John XXIII, reminding his friend to step back and reflect in this "season of maturity."

Biden fired back with a quote from poet Dylan Thomas:

“Old age should burn and rave at close of day,” he wrote. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Contact Margie Fishman at 302-324-2882, on Twitter @MargieTrende or mfishman@delawareonline.com.

Hill Republicans on Biden

"He served as an example of how a powerful person with genuine character and class treats staff or anyone in a position subordinate to their own. He treats them as people with dignity equal to his own." – Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona)

"If you want to get a deal done, bring in the deal man, Joe Biden." – Former Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Virginia)

"As good a man as God has ever created." – Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina)

Who will take up the torch?

Former Sen. Ted Kaufman predicts that these Democratic senators will continue Biden's tradition of compromise:

Sherrod Brown (OH)

Cory Booker (NJ)

Kirsten Gillibrand (NY)

Jack Reed (RI)

Amy Klobuchar (MN)