Biden to run in 2016? Or get dropped from the ticket in 2012?

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Much ado today about reports that Joe Biden is thinking, seriously, about running for president in 2016. That’s surely the signal he meant to send by agreeing to keynote the Iowa Democratic Party’s fall fundraiser this year. The thinking is that candidates looking to stay in the good graces of the Iowa Party for future caucuses take up otherwise thankless assignments like this.

To put it another way: you don’t head to the middle of nowhere Iowa in the middle of 2009 unless you’re planning on someday running for president.

The Biden people have been toying with this kind of speculation notion for a while. They told the Times back in March that the Veep was leaving his options open, and they told the other Times–the one in Los Angeles–the same thing this past summer. Their behavior makes sense. It conflicts with the common wisdom, which holds that Biden’s advanced age will make future runs for the White House impossible, and therefore gives him an injection of political libido. For Biden, and for his aides, these kind of speculative reports enhance their man’s stature, and only fuel more speculation, in turn further enhancing his stature (“stature,”defined here as press attention, a not insignificant statistic to the Washington elite).

But all this has the air of the desperate.

For even if the common wisdom is in fact correct, and Biden’s age is the checkmate of his ambitions, it doesn’t mean he can’t wield power. On the contrary: the past vice president, who was also widely assumed to be unable to succeed Bush, amassed and utilized a great deal of power nonetheless. As Bart Gellman and others have magnificently demonstrated, Cheney knew how to cut through the bureacracy and get done what he wanted to get done. Press coverage, for Cheney, didn’t matter–”undisclosed location” was another way of telling the press to leave him the heck alone.

If Biden had (somewhat) comparable power in the Obama White House, you’d have to think these kind of reports would stop popping up every few months. A VP confident in his or her own power doesn’t have to fan the flames of speculation about presidential contests seven years away. In my own reporting, I’ve wondered about how much muscle Biden really brings to the White House. We all know that, for instance, his view on Afghanistan–that the American effort should become more narrowly focused on counterterrorism–was rejected by the Administration. What also seems clear, and increasingly so with each passing day, is that his economic populist approach isn’t favored, either. Obama seems to prefer the company of technocrats, which Biden certainly is not.

Then again, the most current reporting has indicated that Obama is in fact coming around to the Biden view on Afghanistan, and may refocus the mission to his vice president’s liking. But no matter what happens, one thing is clear: Biden is the Great Unknown of the Administration. He might very well run in 2016–or he could get dropped from the ticket in 2012, if a) Obama feels as  if they haven’t meshed sufficiently, and/or b) Obama needs someone from the Midwest to pick up some electoral slack.

Neither scenario would be exceptionally surprising. But you’ve got to think that these reports are reflective of a Biden team anxious about their man’s future.