WASHINGTON—Just before noon, Joe Biden’s staff received a cryptic email: Come to the Rose Garden.
For weeks that had stretched into months, the White House and the Democratic Party were on edge, awaiting a decision about whether the vice president would jump into the presidential race. Biden’s own staff was torn between their belief in the vice president and their suspicion he would lose.
Even on Wednesday, as Biden’s team rushed to the Rose Garden, few knew exactly what he planned to say.
“Unfortunately, I believe we’re out of time,” Biden declared before television cameras, putting an end to one of the biggest dramas of the 2016 presidential campaign.
The scene that played out, with White House aides scrambling alongside frantic reporters, reflected the chaotic chain of events that led Biden, at long last, to announce he would not run for president. Along the way, Biden had gone right up to the brink of being a candidate, delaying his decision over and over again, before abruptly pulling the plug.
Throughout the ordeal, a tiny cadre of advisers and immediate relatives formed a protective ring around Biden, keeping his deliberations secret. This account of how Biden got to “no” is based on more than a dozen interviews with aides, friends and others in Biden’s orbit. Many requested anonymity to disclose private conversations
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As late as Tuesday night, Biden looked like a man itching for a political fight. For the third time in two days, he used public remarks to take an unmistakable jab at Hillary Rodham Clinton for saying Republicans were her enemy, seemingly sending a warning shot that he would aggressively challenge her in the Democratic primary.
As Biden spoke Tuesday, a handful of political aides were' pressing forward with plans to structure a late entry into the race. With no decision from Biden yet, they even weighed whether he could get into the race as late as Thanksgiving.
The next morning, Biden walked into the Oval Office and told President Barack Obama he wouldn’t be a candidate in the 2016 race.
The two men, who had developed a close friendship during their years in the White House, discussed Biden’s decision for about 30 minutes. Obama told Biden he wanted to stand alongside him in the Rose Garden as he announced the beginning of the end of his political career.
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Any deliberations Biden had begun about the 2016 race ground to a halt in the spring when his oldest son died of brain cancer. The 46-year-old Beau Biden was a popular Democratic politician in his own right, and many in the party expected him to follow his father’s path to Washington, perhaps even to the White House.
In the weeks after his son’s death, Biden told well-wishers that his son had wanted him to make one last run for the presidency. By late summer, the vice president was ready to start weighing that prospect.
He surrounded himself with a trio of trusted aides: chief of staff Steve Ricchetti, political strategist Mike Donilon and former Sen. Ted Kaufman, who had run Biden’s Senate office for roughly two decades before replacing him in the Senate. Donilon and Kaufman, who were no longer working for Biden, were given offices in the White House office building close to the vice president’s suite.
