Familiar Faces at Biden's Side

By the summer of 1987, his campaign had swollen to an unwieldy mass, with multiple voices and conflicting priorities. Biden had become Judiciary Committee chairman in January 1987, and his Senate staff, led by Gitenstein, wanted him to focus on Robert H. Bork's pending Supreme Court nomination. But campaign staffers, including Wilhelm, wanted him in Iowa.

Consequently, there were lots of days like Aug. 23. Biden spent the morning in his Wilmington office, discussing Bork with Senate aides, then flew to Iowa for that night's debate, cramming on the plane with two political advisers. After the event, and oblivious to the storm ahead, he turned his attention back to Bork, whose confirmation hearing would begin Sept. 15.

In the meantime, John Sasso, campaign manager for Democrat Michael S. Dukakis, leaked to reporters a videotape comparing Biden's debate remarks to the original Kinnock speech. An older Biden speech surfaced with an unattributed Robert F. Kennedy quote; text had been added by Caddell without Biden's knowledge, as the campaign would later clarify. And a C-SPAN camera caught Biden exaggerating his academic record to New Hampshire voters.

On Sept. 22, Kaufman met with Biden and urged him to drop his primary bid. He compared Biden's plight to Winston Churchill's failed effort to take control of the Dardanelles Straits during World War I.

"He was a very young man," Kaufman said of Biden. "I reassured him, and I genuinely believed, that he could come back from this."

New Attitude, New Campaign

The following February, Biden suffered the first of two aneurysms that required highly risky brain surgeries. Twice, his skull was carved open and then stitched back up like a baseball. He disappeared for six months.

At the end of his convalescence, Biden gathered his family and aides for a spaghetti dinner to discuss the next phase of his career. He would return to Washington and focus on the Senate. He would stop giving political speeches and pare down his television appearances. "I wanted to establish that I was a serious guy," Biden said.

He had learned a hard lesson in 1987. "I was the John Edwards, the mini-Barack Obama. I was the candidate of passion, and I didn't like that. The fundamental mistake I made was buying into a rationale for a candidacy that I didn't agree with. I just didn't feel comfortable. And I should have listened to my own instincts."

The gang had long scattered when Biden called everyone together last year to announce that he would take another shot at the presidency. Rasky put his work at his Boston firm on hold and resumed his old communications job. Kaufman had retired from Biden's Senate office on Dec. 31, 1994, but had turned down lobbying jobs in case Biden summoned him again. Klain, Donilon and Wilhelm, who had all become Clinton people, returned to the Biden fold, as did Marttila, who had most recently advised his old friend Kerry's 2004 campaign.

There are new faces, too, including campaign manager Luis Navarro, political director Danny O'Brien and Antony Blinken, a former Clinton national security official who advises the senator on Iraq along with Donilon. Biden acknowledged a touch of friction between the old and new camps. "Everyone knows the people you're going to call in a crisis," he said. "In a sense I can see somebody who is the next Marttila saying, 'Hey, man, do I have to go through them?' "

Longevity has its pros and cons, said William Mayer, a Northeastern University political scientist who has studied presidential campaigns. Aides who are personally close to their bosses may be more effective at delivering bad news. On the other hand, "when you've been with a candidate for years, you've got a friendship there that could make it harder," Mayer said. And he added, "Even if they're not very good, it's difficult to fire people who you like."

Biden's campaign, O'Brien said, has been "a mom-and-pop operation and now it's growing into a conglomerate, but the character is still family." Referring to the old guard, he said: "These guys know his moves, know the way he thinks. They have a mature understanding of his limitations and his strengths, and how to play to his strengths. It doesn't mean we don't have it out. But you just have more consensus."

Gitenstein, battle-tested by the Bork hearings, was summoned to help Biden write a speech early this year to the Democratic National Committee, a critical moment that came shortly after the Obama flap. The address was warmly received, and afterward, Gitenstein raced off to catch a flight to California for the birth of his first grandchild. Before he arrived at the hospital, the phone rang. It was Biden, eager for details.

"I worked for Sam Ervin for a while, which was sort of like working for Abraham Lincoln," Gitenstein said, referring to the late North Carolina senator. "I liked the guy, but it was not personal with him. He never let his hair down. Joe Biden doesn't have a lot of hair, but with Joe Biden, it's like your friend is there. I think he knows it, and we know it."