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Alex,

Jay Carney, Elizabeth and I were there with the VP.

Themal has this wrong -- the VP was talking about Ted Kaufman at this
point of the interview, not Beau Biden.

It may not matter, given how close this is to Beau's announcement --
but the VP was talking about how great a job Ted has done as Senator,
how much respect Ted has for Themal, how Ted would need to be
convinced to run since he has said he wouldn't.

This sounds to be like Themal and the VP were talking past each other
-- with Themal thinking it was about Beau and the VP talking about
Ted. But, if we check the tape -- and Elizabeth will -- I'm certain
that it will be clear that Themal got it wrong.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 24, 2010, at 9:52 AM, Alexander Snyder-Mackler <smacklera@gmail.com
> wrote:

> This is in this morning's opinion section with a headline across the
> top, "VP: Beau Doesn't Want to Run"
>
> Mike -- do you know who was with him for this interview? Was this
> off the record? It's Themal, so you never know. Nothing we can do at
> this point, anyway.
>
> Our conversation ended with a surprising request from the vice
> president as he hurried off to a national security meeting.
> Spontaneously, he turned to the possible Delaware senatorial
> campaign of his son Beau.
>
> Biden: "If you run into Beau, talk him into running; he respects you."
>
> Me: "I don't think he wants to run, though."
>
> Biden: "I don't think he does either. I know he doesn't want to. ...
> I'm so proud of the job he's done [as attorney general]."
>
> Me: "Would you campaign for him [against Republican Mike Castle]?"
>
> Biden: "Hell, yes. I told him I'd give him my sixth-born grandchild."
>
> I doubt Beau Biden "respects" me, but it was quite startling to hear
> the vice president confirm what many Democrats fear -- that Beau
> does not want to be the candidate.
>
>
>
>
> January 24, 2010
>
> VP Biden: Beau doesn't want to run
>
> By HARRY F. THEMAL
> The News Journal
>
> In January 2009, when Joe Biden said goodbye to the Senate where he
> had served for 36 years, he told his colleagues, "I will always be a
> Senate man. Except for the title of 'father,' there is no title,
> including 'vice president,' that I am more proud to wear than that
> of United States senator."
>
> Now, one year later, he is dismayed by what has happened to the
> Senate, and he is trying to convince a reluctant son to run for his
> former seat.
>
> In a wide-ranging interview last week about his first year as vice
> president, Biden said a "lamentable atmosphere" exists in the
> Senate, a view he says is shared by some of his long-time Republican
> friends. Sixty votes are needed to pass almost anything to forestall
> a filibuster, because the Republicans are unanimously saying no. How
> did a deliberative constitutional body lose the basic principle that
> a majority -- in the Senate's case, 51 votes -- doesn't count?
>
> "I have never seen one party [standing] the rules on their head like
> this," Biden says. "I can't think of a time when every single vote,
> from an NLRB nomination to health care, required 60 votes. No
> democracy can long be sustained where you can only rule by
> supermajority."
>
> So Biden has constitutional scholars researching whether and how
> such a stalemate can be broken. As vice president, he presides over
> the Senate he so loves and where he can cast the tie-breaking vote.
> "I never thought we would get a genuine bipartisanship on health
> reform, but I also didn't think people would vote against funding
> our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan by directly voting against the
> defense appropriation bill."
>
> Calling that Senate stalemate the greatest disappointment of his
> first 12 months as the nation's second-highest elected official,
> Biden said his two greatest surprises have been "institutional
> constraints" and how he has become an "impact player." The
> constraints he most chafes against are the security arrangements
> required by his office, when "I got to have 28 Secret Service agents
> when I take off," and when he cannot easily invite or circulate with
> the Delawareans who have long been his friends.
>
> He is pleased with "how quickly I have been able to be an impact
> player in the implementation of ideas and initiatives."
>
> We spoke after he had just had his weekly one-on-one meeting with
> President Obama in a small dining room off the Oval Office. Over his
> tomato soup and a cheeseburger, they discussed personal matters but
> concentrated on foreign concerns and domestic issues that each
> wanted to bring up. It's obvious Obama and he have created an
> excellent working relationship.
>
> Biden has been the country's point man on Iraq, speaking frequently
> to its leaders on the phone and inviting all parties to his
> Washington office, and visiting the country now for the fourth time.
> He is concerned that 500 candidates have been disqualified for the
> coming election. As a New York Times Magazine profile headlined in
> November, Biden "could be the second-most-powerful vice president in
> history" as a "foreign policy sage, sounding board, senatorial arm-
> twister, troubleshooter."
>
> According to his office, Biden is projected to be the most-traveled
> vice president ever, already having visited 14 countries and having
> met more than 120 foreign officials in their countries and in
> Washington. The office also compiled some other achievements for
> that first year: He oversaw the White House Middle Class Task Force
> and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; raised funds for 33
> candidates from 19 states; "was instrumental in Sen. Arlen Specter's
> switch to the Democratic Party"; hosted more than 5,000 people (with
> wife Jill) at their official home at the Naval Observatory and has
> made "fighting for veterans and military families a major priority."
>
> Biden's analysis of the Democrats' loss in Massachusetts was similar
> to others'. The key problem for the Democrats may have been that the
> Republicans campaigned against the health care bill in the only
> state that already covers almost all of its citizens. He felt that
> Democrat Martha Coakley "paid virtually no attention to the race,
> always a disaster. ... I don't think the Republicans would have been
> ahead had she hit the ground running." He also called the GOP
> winner, Scott Brown, an "attractive personality, who came across as
> confident, was a good campaigner."
>
> He didn't mention it, but Biden himself was a virtual unknown
> quantity when he won his first term against the popular J. Caleb
> Boggs in 1972 in perhaps as much of an upset.
>
> It certainly seems as if the president's coattails are very short
> these days, since not only did Coakley lose in a strongly Democratic
> state but Republican governors were recently elected in New Jersey
> and Virginia. Obama campaigned for Democrats in all three states.
> Biden does not draw a doomsday conclusion from that for the November
> elections.
>
> "Initially you'll see great consternation, wringing of hands, 'Does
> this mean our administration is dead?' " Biden said. He points out
> that after the 2008 election when the Republicans got clobbered,
> "people said the Republican Party is dead and buried and gone
> forever," but it's bounced back.
>
> "As far as the Democrats may be down in the polls, the Republicans
> are down further," he pointed out. Even though both congressional
> parties are in the 20s or 30s percentage-wise, both the president
> and the vice president continue to rate in the 50s and 60s. To win
> in November, "we have to focus on what's on people's immediate
> plate. If by November the president is able to stand up and say, 'I
> kept my commitment,' and all combat troops are out of Iraq, and we
> again have the beginnings of a functioning democracy there, we have
> the support of the international community to deal with Iran, we
> have halted the job loss and have created more than a million jobs,"
> chances are good for the Democrats.
>
> "That's in contrast with the Republicans, who have offered virtually
> nothing."
>
> Biden cited Obama's forceful aid to Haiti as showing the level of
> competency Delawareans always approved.
>
> In contrast, he thinks President George W. Bush's handling of the
> devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and the Gulf
> Coast was probably the "most single damaging thing that happened to
> George Bush."
>
> Our conversation ended with a surprising request from the vice
> president as he hurried off to a national security meeting.
> Spontaneously, he turned to the possible Delaware senatorial
> campaign of his son Beau.
>
> Biden: "If you run into Beau, talk him into running; he respects you."
>
> Me: "I don't think he wants to run, though."
>
> Biden: "I don't think he does either. I know he doesn't want to. ...
> I'm so proud of the job he's done [as attorney general]."
>
> Me: "Would you campaign for him [against Republican Mike Castle]?"
>
> Biden: "Hell, yes. I told him I'd give him my sixth-born grandchild."
>
> I doubt Beau Biden "respects" me, but it was quite startling to hear
> the vice president confirm what many Democrats fear -- that Beau
> does not want to be the candidate.
>
>
>
> --
>
> Alexander Snyder-Mackler
> (302) 598-867