Quotes of the Day

The waitress came rushing out of the diner in Manchester, N.H., with a guest book for Joe Biden to sign and stayed to tell a story. Her name was Michelle Griffin, and she had just returned to work after being ill for two years. Her husband was working two jobs. They were putting two daughters through college. They had no health insurance. "There were times when I thought we wouldn't make it ..." she said, and tears filled her eyes. Biden put his hands on her shoulders, and his forehead on hers—an awkward but touching gesture—and she shuddered into deep sobs. He hugged her. "I don't understand why people on welfare get health care and we don't," Griffin said after a while, and Biden replied, "Because the system is screwy."

This is my ninth New Hampshire primary, and I've seen this scene before. It is always heartbreaking, infuriating; it is always about health insurance. Biden handled the encounter with a lovely Celtic grace, but it was odd all the same—an emotional moment in a presidential quest that few people are taking seriously. Biden has been a U.S. Senator for 35 years. He has the strongest foreign policy credentials of any of the candidates in the field—in a year when such expertise should be paramount. And yet in the latest New Hampshire poll he is rocking along at 3%, the same level as Dennis Kucinich but ahead of Chris Dodd, an equally estimable Senator. Biden raised "only" $2.3 million in the last quarter.

"The money race is in a different world this time," he sighed as we headed for a house party in Durham. "You've got Obama raising almost $35 million in the last quarter, God bless him." And Hillary Clinton, nearly as much. "But it has no relationship with what's happening in the states. Here in New Hampshire, nobody's made up their mind. Only [10%] of likely voters say they're definite about their choice ... So we think we're very much in this thing."

Biden has half a point. Despite the rock-star crowds generated by celebrity candidates like Clinton and Obama, despite the various polls that indicate a heightened level of public interest in the election this time, the battle hasn't been joined—and probably won't be, fully, until Thanksgiving Day. But when the stubborn voters of Iowa and New Hampshire get around to picking and choosing, my guess is they won't choose Biden, because of a matter of style and a matter of substance.

The matter of style is obvious: he talks too much, and often imprudently. At the Durham house party, Biden wandered garrulously through a series of themeless anecdotes, which were often interrupted by other anecdotes, punctuated by gloppy attempts at folksiness ("As my mother used to say, 'No purgatory for you—it's straight to heaven!'") and the occasional condescending, syllabic pronunciation of a key word: "It's about di-PLO-ma-cee, folks."

Then again, Biden's Durham awkwardness may have been caused by the way his hostess, state representative Marjorie Smith, introduced him. She asked him to talk not about foreign policy but about "some of the other issues in this campaign, like health care and global warming." And while Biden can talk with some authority and insight about almost any issue, it is Iraq that is consuming him. At his next house party, he devoted his entire speech—a far more focused effort—to the war. It was something I hadn't seen this year; most candidates, in both parties, try to rid themselves of Iraq in a sentence or two. Not Biden. "We have all sorts of problems and opportunities, but there's a big boulder sitting in the middle of the road—it's Iraq," he told the crowd. "And even if we solved Iraq tomorrow, the Middle East will still be in chaos." He continued in detail about his proposed Iraq solution: partition of the country into a loose federation of three states, which, he hopes, would defuse the regional crisis. In defense of his position as the only Democrat to vote to continue funding the war, he offered the best of all possible reasons—to speed lifesaving, mine-resistant armored vehicles to the war zone.

And this, sadly, is Biden's substantive liability. Democrats want to hear only one sentence about Iraq: I'll get out as soon as possible. They're not so interested in the nuances of partition plans and mine-resistant vehicles. They are, as always, besotted with domesticity. Their iconic voter is Michelle Griffin, in tears over health insurance, and, yes, it is time we did something about that. But Biden's message—that foreign policy is complicated, that Iraq and its consequences can't just be wished away, that a supple alternative to Republican overseas bullying must be found—is the most important of 2008. And it is the reason Joe Biden still adds real value to this campaign.

• JOE KLEIN