Joe Biden spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 27, 2016. (Credit: CNN)
Former Vice President Joe Biden is clearly leaving the door open to running for president in 2020, saying in an interview published Wednesday he hasnt ruled it out.
I havent decided to run, he told Vanity Fair. But Ive decided Im not going to decide not to run. Well see what happens.
He said that the decision would be hard on his family.
Its hard, he added. You dont run by yourself. Your family is totally implicated. They become news; they become fodder.
He said that if his late son Beau hadnt fallen ill, he would have ran for President.
No question, he said in the interview. I had planned on running, and I wasnt running against Hillary or Bernie or anybody else. Honest to God, I thought that I was the best suited for the moment to be President.
Assessing the current administration, he said that President Donald Trump gets in his own way in the path to improve the United States.
We are so well positioned to own the 21st century Jesus, God! if we just get out of our own way. The rest of the world is not a patch on our jeans. I mean, jeez, we have problems, but holy mackerel!
He also said Trump is not only self-referential and uninformed, but also a threat to the very foundations of the country.
This sounds corny, he said, but everything the founders did was to erect institutions that made it more difficult to abuse power. Thats why they have three different branches of government. And what really worries me about this administration is the frontal attack on those institutions that, if they were lost, makes the abuse of power so much more available.
Bidens recent speeches, interviews and activities have left many wondering what exactly the former vice presidents future plans may be.
Biden has been busy lately campaigning for fellow Democrats running for office in Virginia and New Jersey, endorsing statewide candidates across the country and criticizing the current commander in chief when speaking to groups at universities, events and stops on his book tour.
He has cast Trump as racist, told an LGBT crowd that we have a hell of a lot of work to do and tweeted at Trump that this has to stop.
Once again, we are living through a battle for the soul of the nation a battle I thought was done and won, Biden said in late September in South Carolina.
Hes also participated in recent events alongside Republicans. Last week, he awarded Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain with the National Constitution Centers Liberty Medal in Philadelphia. The next day, he invited Ohio Gov. John Kasich one of Trumps most vocal Republican critics to the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware for a discussion about bipartisanship.
We have a President who does not understand governance, Biden said at the event alongside Kasich. It is absolutely bizarre.
No question, he said in the interview. I had planned on running, and I wasnt running against Hillary or Bernie or anybody else. Honest to God, I thought that I was the best suited for the moment to be President.
Good old Uncle Joe,as modest and unassuming as ever!
But to give him full credit,he was most likely just parroting what he had been taught to say,and has no idea what it means.
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.