Did Joe Biden leak that his son Beau wanted him to run for president?

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When The New York Times published the Aug. 1 column, "Joe Biden in 2016: What Would Beau Do?" talk of a Biden presidential run hit a fever pitch. The column, written by Maureen Dowd, revealed a tender moment between Biden and his dying son Beau in which, Dowd writes, Beau "tried to make his father promise to run, arguing that the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values." Now, multiple sources tell Politico that the source of the story that effectively "marked a turning point in the presidential speculation" surrounding Biden was none other than the veep himself.

The revelation that Biden spoke directly to Dowd and told her the story — if true — casts the subsequent series of events in a different light. As Politico puts it, "It was no coincidence that the preliminary pieces around a prospective campaign started moving right after that column" because "Biden had effectively placed an ad in The New York Times."

Biden's grappling with his 2016 decision is tinged by grief no doubt; but what this revelation shows is that while Biden has been mourning, he's also been strategizing. “Calculation sort of sounds crass, but I guess that's what it is," a source who had recently spoken to Biden told Politico. "The head is further down the road than the heart is."