Watch Stephen Colbert’s Powerful Interview with Joe Biden on Death, Faith

So he commuted daily between Capitol Hill and Delaware, a 90-minute train ride, to care for his sons.

The openness – the fact that Biden holds the capacity to surprise even seasoned strategists after more than four decades as a politician – is exactly what voters seem to be craving during this election season.

He also said the meeting focused on the more mundane policy topics like the Export-Import Bank and rebuilding U.S. infrastructure. In 1988, he overcame another personal tragedy, life threatening cranial aneurysms. Blinking back tears and taking his time to answer, Biden was open, honest, and human, able to access deep and dark emotions with disarming candor that would be impressive coming from anyone-and was shockingly forthright for a politician. Loquacious and garrulous, Biden is likeable and authentic. Biden didn’t talk politics or tell us how he was going to fix immigration, health care or the economy.

“I feel like I was letting down Beau, letting down my parents, letting down my family, if I didn’t just get up”, Biden said, his voice trailing off at points.

In an gut-wrenching, extremely personal interview on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” Thursday, Biden didn’t sound like a man who was ready to join the race for the White House.

The vice president is still determining whether his family has the emotional capacity to run for president as they continue to grieve the loss of Beau.

As Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign has struggled over the summer, a growing number of influential Democrats have disclosed that they’d like Biden to challenge her – either as an alternative or to force her to step up her game.

“I find the people I’m most drawn to are people who have been hurt”, Biden said to Colbert, “and I’m not going to embarrass you, buddy, but you’re one of them”. Beyond the burden of his son’s death, he knows as an announced presidential candidate he will come under heavy attack from Republicans.

In December of 1972, Biden lost his wife and his daughter in a auto crash that injured Beau and his other son, Hunter. Biden has failed twice to be elected president, in 1988 and 2007. Biden is putting his heart in our lap.

I understand, I suppose, what Biden is saying, but I’m not sure I agree with him. “I know that he was a great man, and I was hoping you could tell us a story about him”.

That late-night television appearance that again threw his candidacy into question.

“All of a sudden, I lost it”, Biden said.

The intense interest stirred up by the prospect of Biden running campaign has essentially frozen the Democratic primary campaign, as Hillary Rodham Clinton and the other candidates wait to see whether theyll face another formidable contender.

When I asked him if Biden had declared definitively that he was running, Wolf said no. Had Biden made a plea for Wolf’s support? And yet, of course, Beau was also sustained by his father.

Stephen Colbert poses backstage with his awards for Outstanding Variety Series and Outstanding Writing For A Variety Series at the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles on September 22, 2013.