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more disturbed by the division that was widening in American politics. There was less and less cooperation between Democrats and Republicans. Biden thought the Republican attacks on John Kerry had been especially nasty.

Biden believed that if he were president, he could bring together the hostile factions in Iraq and finally end that war. Jill, who had hung back from politics in the past, now wholeheartedly believed that he should run. In June 2005, Joe appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation and stated frankly that he intended to run in 2008. He began to gather his campaign team.

As President George W. Bush’s second term went on, the Iraq War looked more and more like a bad mistake. And in August 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, causing the worst national disaster in US history. President Bush was widely criticized for mishandling the national response.

In 2006, the prices of housing collapsed, the first sign that the US economy was sliding toward the Great Recession of 2007–2008. With the congressional elections of 2006, the Democratic Party regained control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. More than ever, Joe Biden was convinced that he should make a new run for the presidency.

Before launching a campaign for president, candidates often write a book to present themselves to the public. Joe Biden told his life story in Promises to Keep, published in 2007. The dedication page read, “For Mom and Dad, who kept their promises.” While most political memoirs are bland and boring, Biden’s book was highly readable. He told an inspiring personal story of challenges overcome, of love and tragedy and finding love again.

In January 2007, Joe Biden told Meet the Press that he was definitely running for president. This time, he declared, he was “going to try to be the best Biden I can be.” He didn’t mention a serious Biden family worry.

While the Bidens were proud that Beau had just been elected attorney general of Delaware, his younger brother, Hunter, was struggling with addiction. Unlike his father, Hunter had started drinking in high school. In recent years he had been in and out of recovery programs.

Just days before Joe Biden announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination, Hunter and his uncle Jimmy were in the headlines. They had gotten entangled in a risky high-finance deal and lost a large sum of money. Furthermore, a third business partner was suing them. This publicity was not good for Biden’s campaign.

However, it was Joe himself, not his reckless son, who would undermine his chances for the Democratic nomination.

In the campaign of 2008 there were several Democratic candidates, but the two getting the most attention were Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, wife of former president Bill Clinton, and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. Hillary Clinton was the first woman who seemed to have a good chance of being nominated. And Obama, an African American, was a rising young star in the Democratic Party.

Biden didn’t think Obama was a strong candidate, because he’d been elected to the Senate only four years before. But he thought it spoke well of the Democratic Party that Obama was in the race. As he said to a reporter for the New York Observer, Obama was “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

Oops. Joe Biden had spoken without thinking. His careless words exploded into the media. In the Wilmington News Journal, the headline on February 1, 2007, was SEN. BIDEN STUMBLES OUT OF GATE IN ’08 RACE.

Joe had not meant his remark the way it sounded, and he immediately called Barack Obama to apologize. Obama didn’t take it personally, but it did make him think twice about Biden’s judgment.

Biden and his campaign pressed on through 2007, but they had a hard time raising money. In November, in a Democratic debate on CNN, he was almost ignored by the moderator. However, Joe was sincerely enjoying campaigning. More than any other time he’d run for office, he felt he was being his authentic self.

As always, he had the full support of his family. Hunter was by his side, a “security blanket,” as Hunter put it later, as Joe drove to Iowa for the caucuses. Joe and his team pinned their hopes on this first event of the primary contest. If Biden came in third, he’d have a solid footing to continue.

But the Iowa caucuses on January 3, 2008, wiped out Joe Biden’s 2008 campaign for the presidency. He came in fifth. His chance at the Oval Office in the White House was gone—at least for this cycle.

Ashley Biden admired her father for the way he comforted his family. After all, he told them, he still had a job that he loved. He was going back to the Senate, where he could accomplish a lot for the country as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Some people wondered if, when the Democratic primary elections were over, Biden might be picked for vice president. Biden had already answered that question, telling an interviewer in August 2007, “I can absolutely say with certainty I would not be anybody’s vice president, period. End of story. I guarantee I will not do it.”

The Vice Presidency

Many presidents have chosen a vice president purely because they thought that person would help bring in voters on Election Day. As a result, many presidents did not even like the vice president they felt they had to choose. And some vice presidents have not been qualified for their main duty: to take over leadership of the country if the president dies or is disabled.

In the history of the United States, it has happened nine times that the vice president became president because the sitting president was unable to serve. Eight vice presidents have stepped into the Oval Office after the president’s death. Gerald Ford became president when Richard Nixon resigned.

The Constitution gives the vice president only two other duties: to preside over the Senate, and to cast the deciding vote in