Joe Biden Regrets Not Being President
Photo: WireImage.
Former vice president Joe Biden got frank with a group of Colgate University students Friday night, when he revealed that one of his major regrets is not being president of the United States, local newspaper the Observer-Dispatch reports.
"On a college campus I will never, never do anything other than answer the question completely unvarnished and straightforward," Biden told the school's president, Brian W. Casey, when asked if he regretted not running for president, according to the Observer-Dispatch. "The answer is that I had planned on running for president. And although it would have been a very difficult primary, I think I could have won."
But things changed after his oldest son Beau died of brain cancer in May 2015. Five months later, in October 2015, the then vice president gave an emotional speech in the White House Rose Garden to announce that he wouldn't run.
"As my family and I have worked through the grieving process, I’ve said all along that it may very well be that that process, by the time we get through it, closes the window on mounting a realistic campaign for president," he said, according to the transcript of his speech in the Washington Post. "I’ve concluded it has closed."
The Observer-Dispatch reports that although Biden doesn't regret his decision to not run, "because no man or woman should announce they're running for president of the United States unless they can look the public in the eye and promise you they can give you 100 percent," he does regret not holding the office.
"At the end of the day, I just couldn't do it," Biden told the Colgate students. "So I don't regret not running. Do I regret not being president? Yes."
But just because Biden isn't sitting in the Oval Office doesn't mean that he is done doing meaningful work. In January, we reported that the former VP plans on starting a cancer research initiative.
Biden hinted at a 2020 run in December, and even when he told Late Show host Stephen Colbert in that same month that it probably wasn't happening, he didn't fully close the door on the option."You don’t know what’s going to happen," Biden said. "Hell, Donald Trump’s going to be 74, I’ll be 77 — and in better shape. What the heck?"
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This story originally appeared on Teen Vogue.
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