"They don't own the Democratic Party"

Joe Biden talks about lefty bloggers, the perils of candor in a YouTube age, Dick Cheney's secret thoughts, and how many troops a Biden administration would keep in Iraq.

Editor's note: The following transcript has been edited for length. Walter Shapiro's story on Joe Biden in Iowa can be read here.

By Walter Shapiro

Read more: George W. Bush, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Dennis Kucinich, Politics, Bill Richardson, News, Walter Shapiro, Iraq, Joseph Biden, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Daily Kos, 2008 election, Mike Gravel, Candidate interviews

July 6, 2007 | GRINNELL, Iowa -- Sen. Joseph Biden sat down with Salon Tuesday morning for an interview in the back seat of his campaign van while en route from Cedar Rapids to Grinnell.

How angry will you be if this turns out not to be a serious election on the issues and is instead decided over who has the best "Sopranos" parody video or who had the most maladroit haircut? Or even, who shouts the loudest about how much they hate the Iraq war?

If it turns out to be that, I will be very disappointed that I didn't spend the summer at Rehoboth Beach [Delaware]. You think I'm kidding, I'm not. And it would mean that the Democrats are going to lose if that's what happens.

But I don't think that's where it is. I think that of the candidates who might fit into that categoric description now, it's possible that one of them could step up. I think one of them can. Others can't.

The reason I'm asking this question is that I'm really worried that answering questions from 100 people in a coffee shop in Cedar Rapids, as you just did, may be old politics. We may have entered a new era that neither you as a candidate nor me as a reporter have ever seen before.

Look, I think that is a genuine possibility. I quite frankly think it's what several of the candidates are banking on since it's their ticket in. And I don't blame them for that, what the hell.

But I don't think that's going to happen. If I thought that the polling data out there now actually reflected people making up their minds, I'd be really worried. But I believe from being on the ground in Tupelo, Miss., or out in Los Angeles or in Cedar Rapids, I don't think people are even close to making up their mind.

I think this is so wide open. Right now it's more like -- and this is not a criticism of the process but an observation -- it's more like a celebrity show. It's interesting, when you think about it.

What you have too is a bit of a romance factor. [Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton] are serious people, but you have a romance factor here that this is what we've been fighting for as Democrats. The thing that I say to people -- my supporters -- when they say, "Don't you get discouraged?" If after 1968, getting out of law school, I had been sent on a space capsule to Mars and I was now reentering the planet Earth and people were giving me an update on what's going on politically and they say, "By the way, in the Democratic Party, you've got this woman and this guy, an African-American, who are doing well," I'd say, "That's great. That's great."

We're about to get by that. That doesn't mean that those two people can't rise up to the next level and say, "By the way, not only am I a leading celebrity as a woman senator and an African-American senator, but guess what, I'm the real deal. And here's where I can show you that."

I will be disappointed if, in fact, we never got to that stage and it ends like you expressed it. But I think we will. If at that stage, the Democratic Party, after a serious look, says that these other two are better prepared to lead the country and deal with these real problems, I'll say that's OK. I can die a happy man not hearing "Hail to the Chief" played for me.

Is that the difference between you now and when you first set out to run for president in the 1988 election? [Biden dropped out of the race in late 1987 after using the autobiographical words of British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock without attribution during an Iowa speech.]

Absolutely ... I realized later that I was focused on my conviction that I was a better candidate than the other people -- and not that I was ready to lead the country. There is a difference.

I'm in this one because I really believe that I know what needs to be done to lead this country. I really believe that I can do this. I can lead the country to a new place. And the difference between being 44 and 64 is that my belief in my ability [back then] stemmed from my confidence in my analytical ability and my early life experience.

My belief now is that a lot of the things that are front and center are things that I have been deeply involved in for the past 12 to 15 years and I have turned out to be, I think, right about. I have made recommendations to presidents and made recommendations to senators that in the end have reinforced my confidence in my judgment to be able to do this. And that's a big difference.

I have read the paper that you wrote with [former president of the Council on Foreign Relations] Leslie Gelb advocating a tripartite federal system for Iraq that divides the country among the Shia, the Sunnis and the Kurds. But given the rate at which things are deteriorating in Iraq, is there a point at which it becomes impossible for this plan to be implemented when a new president takes office on Jan. 20, 2009?

What I have been straightforward about saying all along is that I believe what I have recommended would, if implemented now, work. But I have also said that I may be left on Jan. 20, 2009, with no option but to withdraw and contain. To literally have inherited a fractured country. Not just a divided country, but a fractured country where there is no way to put Humpty-Dumpty back together.

For me, the first step here for a political solution to have a chance of working is to disengage from this civil war, limit the mission and provide circumstances where the political option, led by the international community, is there.

When Les [Gelb] and I laid out that plan [in May 2006], had President Bush accepted that plan, he could have implemented that plan as a made-in-America idea. Today, we have so little credibility in the world and the region that you have to have the international community as the one putting its stamp on this.

That's an example of how we have limited our ability to affect outcomes, having lost our credibility so profoundly that you have to have the permanent five [members of the United Nations Security Council] being the catalyst for this political solution. And who knows what happens in 20 months.

Next page: "I believe that Cheney ... and the neocons who are left ... believe that there is no workable solution [in Iraq]"