US vice president Joe Biden has expressed doubt about the likelihood of him runninng for president, saying that "I'd be lying if I said that I knew I was there."
In an emotional, wide-ranging interview on Stephen Colbert's Late Show on Thursday, he touched on his parents, his faith and his emotional fragility from the recent death of his son Beau.
Mr Biden told Colbert that no “man or woman should run for president” without being able to promise voters that “you have my whole heart, my whole soul, my energy, and my passion.”
“Nobody has a right, in my view, to seek that office unless they are willing to give it 110 per cent of who they are,” he told Colbert, on his third night hosting the CBS program.
While the vice president never said directly that he did not plan to run for president, a decision that would disappoint the handful of “Draft Biden” supporters who chanted “Run, Joe, Run” in front of the Ed Sullivan Theatre in Manhattan, where the show was taped Thursday afternoon, he repeatedly seemed to hint that he may not be ready to run for president for a third time.
Mr Biden told a story about how he broke down when he was greeting members of the military and their families at a rope line in Denver, when one of them mentioned Beau.
“It was going great,” Mr Biden recalled. “All of a sudden, a guy in the back yells, ‘Major Beau Biden. Bronze Star, Sir. Served with him in Iraq.’ I lost it.”
Colbert said at one point that the American people were inspired by the vice president because of the tragedies he had endured. In addition to the death of his son, Mr Biden’s first wife and his daughter were killed in a car crash in 1972.
Colbert, who lost his father and two brothers in an airplane crash, told Mr Biden: “It’s going to be emotional for a lot of people if you don’t run. Your example of suffering and service is something that would be sorely missed in the race.”
New York Times