Former Vice President Joe Biden largely avoided mention of today’s political fray during the latest stop on his book tour Tuesday in San Francisco.
But the 75-year-old Democratic statesman, while leaving open the question of whether he was just another retired politician with a memoir to sell or a 2020 contender for president, made clear he was still in the game.
His folksy exchanges with the Bay Area audience about family, sports and religion and his subtle jabs at the dysfunction in Washington had all the hallmarks of the campaign trial.
“You can’t run this country without consensus,” he said, lamenting that there’s no longer a place in the U.S. Senate where legislators from different parties can get together to socialize. “They don’t know each other. How do you get things done?”
Biden’s book, “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose” chronicles the vice president’s struggle to care for his dying son Beau, an Iraq War veteran and former attorney general of Delaware, while serving as President Obama’s right-hand man.
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Beau died of brain cancer in 2015. In 1972, Biden’s wife and one-year-old daughter died in a car accident.
“I wrote (the book) in order to hopefully have people understand you can get through this and life will go on,” he told moderator Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California, who shared the stage with Biden at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. “I wanted people to understand that there is hope.”
“You can find redemption in purpose,” he added, “and be able to do the things that your son, husband, daughter and wife, whoever you’ve lost, would want you to be doing.”
Biden spent much of his 90-minute appearance sharing stories of his time as vice president: the five to seven hours he spent each day in meetings with Obama, the trying efforts to preserve the secrecy of the raid of Osama bin Laden’s Pakastani compound and his work wrestling with the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
“I did not want to be vice president,” Biden admitted. “When the president asked me, I said, ‘no’… There’s no inherent power in the vice president. You’re stand-by equipment.”
Ultimately, however, Biden’s family convinced him to join the campaign, he said, with his mother telling him that helping elect the nation’s first black president was an obligation.
As far as 2020 goes, Biden was mum on the matter Tuesday. But he hasn’t dismissed the possibility of seeking the White House when asked previously. A December CNN poll found that 57 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the former vice president, and he’s generally well-liked by the Democratic establishment.
There was some question this week, however, whether his popularity could rival that of the latest person rumored to be considering a presidential bid, Oprah Winfrey.
Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander