Before Joe Biden melted into a pile of talking skin, he used to be able to summon a greater degree of emotion than a paid eulogist. I don’t mean this as a joke. Despite his abysmal past with Thomas Sowell, or Clarence Thomas, or the 1992 Crime Bill (to name just a few), I used to admire his quality to mourn. He had the ability to balance candor with insurmountable grief. His pain, of course, has been rooted in personal loss, losing both a wife and child in a car wreck.
One must note that Biden’s also a career politician, and career politicians love to find ways to manipulate real grief and suffering in stump speeches. So it’s worthwhile to look shrewdly at Biden’s not-so-distant past life as a semi-decent eulogist.