Biden can come across as a candidate who’s worried that he’s running out of time — and that he’s wasting yours.

John Locher / AP

DES MOINES — Joe Biden’s fight for the soul of America often feels like a fight for the soul of Joe Biden. His four-day swing through Iowa began with a confident rebuke of President Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric. The Wednesday speech in Burlington was timely, given the domestic terrorism days earlier in El Paso, Texas, but also consistent with the themes Biden has campaigned on for months. The next night, Biden’s gravitas gave way to rambling. At an Asian & Latino Coalition event in Des Moines, the former vice president twice ignored a fearless moderator’s requests that he shorten his answers. When a teen asked how he would protect her generation from school shootings, Biden alternated between empathetic and defensive. He talked at her: hunched over, palms down flat on the table in front of her as they locked eyes. He wanted her to know that the survivors of last year’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida, had come to visit him — and, in Biden’s telling, only him.

“Me,” he said. “Nobody else. Me. I met with them. I met with their families.” It can be easy to miss and hard to put your finger on, especially when Biden leads the Democratic presidential field in polling and puts on his aviator-clad frontrunner’s face. But Biden presents with a vibe of doubt. He can come across as a candidate who’s worried that he’s running out of time — and that he’s wasting yours. And he’s not always sure how to make the most of it. Sometimes Biden talks too much, like he did at the Asian & Latino Coalition forum and another event last week where he shouted over music meant to play him offstage. He has a tendency to step on his own applause lines and quiet the cheers, as if he needs to reassure his crowds that what they’re clapping for is legit. “Not a joke,” Biden likes to say. Sometimes Biden doesn’t talk enough. He tells crowds about the plans he has, but he insists that sharing all of the details would keep them there longer than they would like. He loves to reminisce about his eight years in the Obama administration, but not so much about old Senate votes or friendships with segregationists. When responding to Sen. Kamala Harris’s attack on those grounds at a June debate, Biden abruptly finished his rebuttal with seconds to spare and a line some heard with a dual meaning: “Anyway, my time is up.” And sometimes Biden says the wrong thing. Many dispatches from the Iowa trip dwelled on his verbal blunders here.

Stephen Maturen / Getty Images Biden during a forum on gun safety at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines, Aug. 10.

He botched a line from his stump speech at the state fair. (“We choose truth over facts.”) He told the Asian & Latino Coalition audience that “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids” before catching himself and adding “wealthy kids, black kids, Asian kids.” He also blanked for a second when he seemed to confuse former British prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May. Two days later, at a forum on gun control, he talked about Parkland again and recalled meeting with the survivors when he was vice president. But the high school shooting happened more than a year after Biden left office. His staff later explained he had meant the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Connecticut. “Wouldn’t it be nice,” his deputy campaign manager tweeted, “to have a president who consoles Americans in their time of need so often that he sometimes mistakes the timing?” The slipups make it convenient to question if Biden, at 76, is up for the job. Trump, 73, has jumped on them. “Does anybody really believe he is mentally fit to be president?” Trump asked Sunday. But Biden has been making mistakes like these — gaffes, as the political press judges them — for years. The Iowa trip got at a deeper and more existential challenge. Gaffes used to be part of his charm for a certain type of Democrat. Now they’re something that, win or lose, could affect how history remembers him. They can be a bother at a time Biden doesn’t want to be a bother. “Anybody that does a lot of public speaking, sometimes the words kind of get muddled and they don’t come out just right,” Tim Winter, chair of the Boone County Democratic Party, said after hosting an error-free Biden speech the morning after the “poor kids” remark. “Your heart is good. You mean to say the right thing. Sometimes it just comes out wrong.” Biden’s case to be president is wrapped in the notion that the only way to move past Trump, and to render the racism and bigotry Trump’s presidency has fostered an aberration, is to first move back to the Obama–Biden years. “Third term!” one supporter, waiting to snap a Biden selfie with a disposable camera, shouted during a Friday afternoon rally at a public park in Clear Lake, Iowa. Yet even among Iowans who admire Biden and might be inclined to caucus for him when primary season begins in February, there’s a sense his argument and his approach might not be enough to beat candidates who are fresher or more progressive. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren drew louder cheers and larger ovations at the Iowa Democratic Wing Ding, a big party dinner that brought more than 20 presidential contenders to Clear Lake’s historic Surf Ballroom. (It’s known for hosting the last performances of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper before their fatal plane crash.) “I think some folks thought it would just be a cakewalk for him,” J.D. Scholten, an influential Iowa Democrat and congressional candidate, said of Biden in an interview with BuzzFeed News. “I think he’s going to have to earn it like every other candidate. More people know him, so there’s that advantage. But ultimately their campaign is going to have to do the hard work.”

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images Biden delivers a speech at the Des Moines Register Political Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair, Aug. 8.