It was a withdrawal speech that sounded like an announcement speech, and it perfectly captured the aching ambivalence of Joe Biden. He wanted to run for president. He had his favored issues. He had President Obama’s record and was proud to defend it. And the man who noted he’s often called “Middle-Class Joe” felt he had never been a better match for the historical moment. Democrats are more comfortable than ever with Obama’s legacy. And many people, inside the party and out, longed for someone who could campaign with credibility on the theme Biden sounded: “It all starts with giving the middle class a fighting chance.”

. ..
In any event, there is a problem with all of these purely political explanations for Biden’s choice: None tells us why he delayed and delayed and delayed, providing Clinton the openings she seized. There was just one reason: his bottomless grief over the death of his son Beau at age 46 in May.
What Biden told Stephen Colbert last month is what he was telling his friends, and it rang entirely true about a man for whom family is not a word trotted out for political consumption but a commitment that goes to the core of who he is — and what makes him such an attractive human being.

“I don’t think any man or woman should run for president,” Biden said then, “unless, number one, they know exactly why they would want to be president and, 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, and, I’d be lying if I said that I knew I was there.” But he wanted to be there, which is why this choice was so painful and so hard.

Biden’s passion for faith and family has been his moral compass throughout his life. In explaining his worldview Wednesday, he turned, as he often has, to his father’s insistence upon “affording every single person dignity.” This is the obligation that should animate public life. Biden may not be running for president, but he owes it to his dad to keep his promise never to be silent. Fortunately, silence is something he’ll never be good at.