Gaffes, stumbles and missteps – for Biden, the cracks were showing

Joe Biden began by shattering his metaphorical vase, and spent the rest of the press conference putting it back together

The British politician Roy Jenkins once famously observed that Tony Blair's challenge in getting Labour elected in 1997 was like a man carrying a priceless Ming vase across a highly polished floor".

Joe Biden dropped the vase, shattering it into a thousand crazy pieces, before his rare press conference even got started on Thursday.