http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/09/20/joe-biden-bobby-kennedy-1968-2016-column/72520960/Column: Joe Biden is 2016's Bobby Kennedy
James S. Robbins 5:33 p.m. EDT September 20, 2015
To run or not to run? That is the question. Meanwhile, indecision won't win a primary.
After Vice President Joe Biden’s emotional interview with Stephen Colbert, Financial Times columnist Edward Luce dubbed him “The Hamlet of the 2016 election.” Shades of January 1968, when famed cartoonist Bill Mauldin portrayed a tights-clad Robert F. Kennedy as the Prince of Denmark in a thoughtful pose on a Shakespearean stage. To run, or not to run? That is their question.
Usurping the crown is a weighty matter, something not to be rushed into. The political landscape is similar to 1968. Like today, there was a sluggish economy, rising crime, racial unrest, and unpopular overseas conflict. Both Kennedy and Biden represent the party in power, but could plausibly present themselves as harbingers of change. And both confront acknowledged presumptive nominees — for Kennedy, sitting President Lyndon Johnson, and for Biden, default choice Hillary Clinton.
But the power of this presumption only lasts as long as the belief that a front-runner is strong enough to win. President Johnson, like Hillary Clinton, saw a steady decline in his poll numbers in the summer before the primary season. The watershed was an October 1967 Gallup poll that, for the first time, showed Johnson trailing expected Republican challengers Richard Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller. The same poll showed a hypothetical Kennedy campaign faring better. Similarly, a recently released MSNBC/Telemundo/Marist poll shows Biden more competitive than Clinton against Republican candidates Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush.
continued
