GQ Reporter Gets Some Old Man Biden On Her, Will Have All His Babbies Now

Hey, whatcha reading? Oh, something besides this GQ story about Old Handsome Joe Biden, God Bless Him and Keep Him? Why are you so dumb? Here, let us read, together, the things in Jeanne Marie Laskas's profile that will make you most want to crawl into Joe's lap and ... well, that's all. Just the things that will make you most want to crawl into his lap. You know, as opposed to every other day on this planet.

WHAT?

• I saw him freelance a grand Joe Biden entrance into President Giorgio Napolitano's palace, teeth gleaming, arms fully outstretched, ready to hug this guy, that guy, Hey, guys! I'm here! You're here! We're beautiful! Decked out in his smooth blue suit, white pocket square—his broad smile the kind a man reserves for his bowling team. This demeanor contrasted sharply with everyone else's. Guards in shiny helmets sprouting horsehair ponytails, bedraggled White House advance team in smart skirts and solid-color pumps. A Biden entrance can make the stuffiest event intimate, for an instant human and vaguely...funny.

  Sunshine, apt and miraculous, broke through the day of the pope's installation Mass. "Your Holiness, this is my sister, Valerie," Biden said. The pope. Joe Biden and the pope. Val was next to him in her long black chapel veil, the two of them together at church just like back in Wilmington, and Scranton before. Except it was the Vatican. In the reception line, Val didn't kiss the pope's ring, and Biden didn't kiss the pope's ring (to be fair, plenty of people didn't kiss the pope's ring), because they are Bidens, equal, not below or above anyone, not the pope, not some schlub on the street. "Nobody is better than you." That's the message their mom hammered into their heads. "You're not better than anybody, but nobody is better than you."

  JOE BIDEN DOESN'T KISS UP TO ANYONE, international headlines read later that day, which made it sound way more hostile than his mom ever meant it.

• "Joe Biden doesn't have a mean bone in his body," says John McCain. "He's unique from the day he was elected before he was 30 years old. He's unique in that he's had some role in every major national-security crisis that his nation has faced in the last thirty-five years. I don't know anyone like him in the U.S. Senate. Look at the number of times he's been able to conclude agreements. I would say he's been the most impactful vice president that I've known—certainly in modern times."

  Not Cheney, McCain says. Biden.

  "President Biden" does not sound preposterous to McCain. "Suppose the economy comes on strong. He's bound to get credit.... Of course, the State of the Union speech would be the longest in history."

• The job of vice president is important, really it is, way more important than it used to be, but not in that fucked-up way Cheney made it important. I got the feeling Biden would have loved to say "fucked-up way Cheney made it important." But he didn't say that, not with all the tape recorders going, and the staffers there, and him in his breakfast-with-the-king-of-Jordan blue suit. Still, the uneasy expectation that he might say something like that is the thing, always the thing with Biden, the guy who trips and falls, gets back up, gets taken out, keeps getting back in.

  He will say foolish things he doesn't quite mean, and he will say bluntly brilliant things that others long to say. "This is a big fucking deal," he whispered to Obama, as the president was about to sign the health-insurance-reform bill into law. Of course it was. Thank you, Joe. "Who do you love?" he said on Meet the Press. "Who do you love? And will you be loyal to the person you love?... Whether they're marriages of lesbians or gay men or heterosexuals." Of course. Thank you, Joe.

Send us your address, Jeanne Marie. We got what you need. 

[ GQ ]