Can Joe Biden run with a broken heart?

Vice President Joe Biden watches an honor guard carry a casket containing the remains of his son, former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, into St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church in Wilmington, Delaware, for funeral services. (Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP)

Joe Biden’s son Beau died on May 30, and a little more than three months later, the vice president acknowledged that he was struggling with the decision on whether to enter the presidential race. To most people — whether or not they have a child, let alone lost one — the idea must seem on par with entering the Tour de France three months after open-heart surgery. If Biden runs, he will spend much of the next year on the phone with potential donors, needing to get past the awkward condolences before moving on to hitting them up for money. If he is nominated, he may face Donald Trump, who has shown a keen instinct for going for the jugular and no reluctance to stick a knife in it.

Having trampled most of the boundaries of comity in political discourse – by, for instance, making fun of his rivals’ looks – could Trump be trusted not to taunt an opponent about the death of a family member? (“I just don’t think he’s up to the job. Maybe it’s because his son died. I don’t know.”) And if Biden wins, he will take on the most demanding job in the world a year and a half after burying his son — at a time when, experience teaches, most ordinary people will barely be climbing out of the paralysis of grief.

But successful politicians aren’t ordinary people; they are driven by ambition and a sense of their own destiny that overrides almost every other sentiment. Not many willingly pass up a run for higher office if they have even a chance to win, and most can convince themselves they do. But Biden was clearly ambivalent in his now-famous interview with Stephen Colbert: “I don’t think any man or woman should run for president unless, number one, they know exactly why they would want to be president and, number two, they can look at folks out there and say, ‘I promise you, you have my whole heart, my whole soul, my energy, and my passion to do this. And I’d be lying if I said that I knew I was there.” I don’t know Biden and have no insight into his thinking, but I know, both as a journalist and a father, something about what he is going through and some of the things he should be weighing, and that the rest of us should think about if he does run.

Politics is played for keeps, as Biden knows as well as anyone. As a grieving father, Biden is permitted to show his emotions in public, but as a candidate, he can only show strength. Biden’s first run for the Senate coincided with the 1972 presidential campaign, when Sen. Ed Muskie, D-Maine, denouncing a newspaper attack on his wife, was photographed with droplets on his face that might have been tears. Or they might have been, as he claimed, melting snowflakes, but it was too late: The implication of weakness was fatal to his campaign.From now until the election, if he runs, Biden must perform a delicate balancing act: He has to keep intact his vaunted “authenticity,” the human qualities that voters find so appealing, without becoming known as the candidate of grief. He must not give even the slightest appearance that he is seeking attention or support on the basis of sympathy — and not just because voters would turn away from him. The more insidious danger is to his own conscience; he has to face himself in the mirror and be certain he isn’t using this tragedy as a vehicle for his own ambition.