Biden said to be considering one-term presidency

If Vice President Joe Biden makes the leap into the Democratic presidential race, he could promise that he would serve just one term in the White House, journalist and author Carl Bernstein said Friday.

“And one thing that I keep hearing about Biden is that if he were to declare and say, because age is such a problem for him if he does, I want to be a one-term president. I want to serve for four years, unite Washington. I’ve dealt with the Republicans in Congress all my public life,” Bernstein told CNN’s “New Day.”


“I think there’s a conversation going on to that effect among his aides and friends,” he said. “It could light fire to the current political environment.”

Bernstein suggested that the vice president stands to benefit the most from the current political environment as Hillary Clinton struggles to stem the tide of the ongoing scandal over her use of a private email server while at the State Department and poll numbers about her honesty and trustworthiness decline.

“He’s looking at it right now. His people believe he may do it. Some say yes, some say no. But the distrust factor with Hillary Clinton, the whole Trump excitement and bubble that will probably burst gives a great opportunity to Biden to capture the imagination of the press, of this race, of Democrats who don’t want to see Hillary Clinton, who are worried about the distrust factor with her,” Bernstein added.

The comments follow reports from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times this week that cite Democratic allies playing up the credibility of a third Biden presidential run. (The former Delaware senator ran in 1988 and 2008.)

Dick Harpootlian, the former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, told the Times that Biden did not indicate whether he was going to run during an hourlong conversation. According to the same report, Biden has been calling supporters and directed Harpootlian to get in touch with Mike Donilon, one of Biden’s longtime advisers.

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