Biden Can't Defeat Clinton--She Can Do That Herself

WASHINGTON -- Maybe Joe Biden can help Hillary Clinton get her groove back.

Or, get her groove at all. It's been sorely missing this campaign.

Clinton is at her best, or at least does best with voters, when she's down. See the misty-eyed moment in New Hampshire 2008. Clinton challenged and vulnerable is more appealing to voters than Clinton entitled and regal.

So perhaps the threat of a nudge from Biden -- on top of the actual nudge from Bernie Sanders -- is what it will take to make her, in Barack Obama's famous phrase, "likable enough" to voters.

Biden and Clinton are near ideological twins -- and characterological opposites. Biden oozes authenticity, but lacks discipline. Clinton epitomizes discipline but lacks authenticity.

In the end, I predict, this simultaneous similarity and difference will lead the vice president to decide against entering the race. He lacks a compelling substantive argument for voters to choose him over Clinton -- they are of the same generation, appeal to similar demographics, occupy the same liberal/centrist point on the political spectrum.

At the same time, the character differences end up weighing in Clinton's favor. As much as voters look for a candidate they can imagine having a beer with, they also would weary of Biden's unbridled loquaciousness. Being a late-night punch line is not appealing in a president.

Biden is understandably toying with the notion of running: Presidential fever, once in the bloodstream, has a tendency to linger; at 72, 2016 is his final chance; his late son's wishes are a potent motivator.

Still, I suspect that the Biden trial balloon is less a mark of certain entry than a placeholder, a canny reminder that Biden remains available as a break-in-case-of-emergency candidate if Clinton fizzles.

Which she hasn't -- yet. But, putting it mildly, the campaign so far has not been kind to Clinton. The issues of her private email server and family foundation finances have been, and deserve to be, a drag on her standing with voters. The latest Quinnipiac poll found 37 percent of likely voters deeming her "honest and trustworthy," with 57 percent finding her not. Voters' assessment of Biden was the mirror image, 58 percent assessing him as honest, 34 percent disagreeing.

One troubling snapshot from a new Wall St. Journal-NBC poll: More women now view Clinton negatively than positively.

Biden has a quality of genuineness, of humanity, that seems to elude the public Clinton. My most enduring -- and endearing -- vision of Biden is seeing the grinning vice president at the annual summer party for the media, chasing a group of children with a Super Soaker water gun, and allowing himself to be thoroughly drenched by the tiny mob. Biden is the ultimate extrovert.

Clinton, by contrast, is self-contained and guarded, if not by nature then after years of public pounding. One person who knows her well told me that the key to understanding Clinton was to read Susan Cain's book, "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking." One of Cain's examples is Eleanor Roosevelt, a heroine of Clinton's and, like Clinton, married to the ultimate extrovert.

Clinton's close friend, the late Diane Blair, captured much the same assessment from Clinton herself after a Thanksgiving 1996 phone call. "What she really enjoys is policy," Blair wrote in a memo of their conversation. "Doesn't enjoy advocacy. 'I'd be happy in a little office somewhere thinking up policies, making things happen, refining them.'" The weeds are Clinton's natural habitat.

Being an introvert is not by any means fatal to political success, and Clinton has the capacity to charm, in the right setting. Watch Clinton's relaxed "Chair Chats," released Monday, with South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jaime Harrison. Sitting in a rocking chair, Clinton comes off as warm and accessible as she describes baby-sitting for granddaughter Charlotte and binge-watching HGTV. This is a woman who knows her "Love It or List It."

Compare this charming Clinton to the self-righteous, prickly one who gave her first, and so far only, national television interview to CNN's Brianna Keilar. Clinton dismissed concerns about her trustworthiness as unsubstantiated partisanship, the sort of thing that happens "when you are subjected to the kind of constant barrage of attacks that are largely fomented by and coming from the right." Voters with reasonable worries don't appreciate being dismissed as dupes of political enemies.

Joe Biden isn't going to defeat Hillary Clinton. Not having Biden's strengths, and not figuring out how to develop and display them -- that could.

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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.