Aides: Biden may run in 2016

Buried at the end of an LA Times profile of Joe Biden today is this nugget:

Aides said he might go for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. He would be 74 upon taking office, but his staff insists that’s not too old.

“He’s incredibly fit, vigorous man of his age, and it’s impossible for me to imagine that he won’t be in public service in 2017 in some form,” a Biden aide said.

It does seems a bit early for Biden’s aides to be talking up 2016, even anonymously.

A few more nuggets from what turns out to be a pretty colorful profile:

Valerie Jarrett, a senior advisor to Obama, said in an interview that Biden’s verbal missteps are forgivable: “We all have to have our words clarified at times. That’s part of what makes the vice president so endearing. Everyone says, ‘Oh, my gosh. I could have said that.’ And the press tends to overblow it. We wouldn’t change him one bit.”

“If you said to me, who’s the person in the administration you’d most like to have a beer with, Joe Biden would be the guy most Americans would choose,” Rendell said.

One White House official recalls the vice president fretting over what to get Obama for his 48th birthday earlier this month. Biden wanted to go with a Nintendo Wii. Told that Obama’s daughters already have one, a disappointed Biden said, “You’re kidding.” Instead, he went with a golf range-finder to help the president judge distances to the hole.