The Joe we know

    The last time there was media frenzy around Joe Biden, he was hounded out of the presidential race. In 1987. He never even made it to 1988.

    This time, the swarming was kind of sweet, like wanting to go steady. Joe Biden for vice president! He needed 20 years to reinvent himself, one Sunday talk show at a time.

    Who knew that tanking in Iowa could lead to starring in Denver? That and Russia’s invasion of Georgia. It no doubt helped Biden’s prospects that he is someone who hears “Georgia” and instantly thinks “access to the Black Sea,” not “peaches.”

    People are agog here in Delaware, the state that is 49th in size and peaked when it was the first to ratify the Constitution. Expectations are very low for national recognition. Delaware would happily take “home of a vice president.”

    Biden’s emergence is more evidence he either is the luckiest unlucky man, or the unluckiest lucky man alive. There always has been something Shakespearean about him, his greatest strengths as his tragic flaws. He can do himself in like Othello, but he also is one of the rarest creatures in politics — a second act.

    Whatever impulsiveness the Democrats are getting in Biden, it will not be boring. Delaware knows Biden as the politician windy enough to filibuster himself, the senator itching to show Supreme Court nominees he’s smarter than they are, the world-wise Foreign Relations Committee chairman whose speech on Sept. 10, 2001, warned the terrorists were coming.

    The state has lived with his supernova life since he was elected at age 29 in 1972, buried his wife and baby daughter after a car crash, blew his first presidential run over plagiarism, and barely survived brain aneurysms — but always, always came back.

    All of Delaware is divided into Biden idolizers and Biden haters. The backers more numerous; the detractors more intense. He will be on the ballot twice, because he also is running for re-election. This could put the Biden haters in therapy.

    Celia Cohen wrote “Delaware Grapevine,” a weekly commentary on Delaware politics that was carried in the Dover Post. This column first ran in “TopicA,” an occasional feature of the Washington Post on first impressions of a subject in the news, and is used with permission.