Vice President Joe Biden, the man who might have been the next president, will leave public office after 44 years to focus on cancer research.
Biden passed up a third bite at the presidential apple last year to head up President Obama’s cancer task force, which is trying to make 10 years of cancer research progress in five. He has agreed to continue leading the “moonshot” initiative if Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, but without officially joining a Clinton administration.
“I can’t think of a more fitting cause for him to be involved in,” said Jon Cooper, the New York manufacturer who headed up financing for the short-lived “draft Biden” movement last summer. “I know he will be putting his heart and soul into it.”
No one expects Biden, one of history’s longest-serving senators, to seek any elected office again, including the presidency. But Cooper didn’t rule out Biden, who once led the Senate Judiciary Committee, from accepting a Supreme Court nomination.
“I think what we need on the Supreme Court is common sense” and having “your heart in the right place,” Cooper said. “Joe Biden certainly fits the bill.”
Biden ruled out a run for the White House after losing his oldest son, Beau, to brain cancer in May 2015. He said his heart wouldn’t be in the race and that he needed to focus on his family.
“I don’t believe he’ll ever fully leave behind the world of politics,” Cooper said, “but his primary focus will be to head up the cancer moonshot.”
Biden himself has not fully ruled out seeking public office again, but told ABC News in July, “I don’t plan on that.” But he also said he might join academia and write a book.
Biden has also led a national campaign to combat sexual assault on college campuses. That is a cause he is likely to stick with and one that could dovetail with an academic posting. His commitment to that cause is one of the reasons he has assailed Republican nominee Donald Trump so vigorously, going so far as to threaten to beat him up.
But Biden has made clear that accelerating cancer cure discoveries comes first.
“I’m going to devote the rest of my life to working on this,” Biden said when he delivered the task force’s report to Obama in the Oval Office Oct. 17. “And I think we’re perilously close to making some gigantic progress.”
One aspect of Biden’s future that is clear is where he will live.
Biden has traveled home to his adoptive state of Delaware — he’s a native Pennsylvanian — as much as possible during his years in office.
He went home to Wilmington almost every weekend during his 36-year Senate tenure and has often eschewed his official residence at the Naval Observatory in northwestern Washington for the First State during his almost eight years as vice president.
