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Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Brooklyn on Thursday. He has a greater groundswell of support now than in either of his presidential campaigns in 1988 and 2008.Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. looks like a man running for president, but he does not sound like it.

He flies around the country, making announcements, jogging in parades, giving speeches, meeting with important people and enjoying the cheers. When he finally stops moving long enough to think, however, he makes abundantly clear that he does not have the fire for another national campaign.

Other politicians express a degree of ambivalence before jumping into the presidential pool, but in modern times few if any have voiced the sort of doubts about their own capacity to undertake the ordeal as Mr. Biden has in recent days. In a call with Democrats, in a speech in Atlanta and on television Thursday night, he sounded like an unhappy warrior, still mourning his late son, emotional, worn out, unsure of his future.

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Rather than mounting a nascent presidential campaign, Mr. Biden appears to be engaging in a sort of public therapy, working through his grief in front of seemingly every camera in the nation. He saw Beau Biden, himself a budding young politician who died in May, as his legacy. With the younger Mr. Biden now gone, friends and advisers say the vice president is struggling with whether to run to honor Beau and create a new legacy.

“I’d be lying if I said that I knew I was there,” he told Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show” on CBS on Thursday. “I’m being completely honest. Nobody has a right in my view to seek that office unless they’re willing to give it 110 percent of who they are. As I said, I’m optimistic, I’m positive about where we’re going, but I find myself — you understand it — just sometimes it just sort of overwhelms you and I can’t be —— ”

Then he stopped.

In a halting voice, his face etched with pain, Mr. Biden described a recent encounter with a soldier, who called out Beau Biden’s name and said he had served with him in Iraq. “All of a sudden, I lost it,” the vice president said. He paused. “I shouldn’t be saying this.” He shook his head. “You can’t do that. You can’t do that.” Can’t do what, he did not say.

Many of his friends and advisers believe that he ultimately will not run, but they are trying to give him room to come to that conclusion on his own. The lure is powerful for a man who has run twice already for president. Initially all but forgotten amid assumptions of a Hillary Rodham Clinton coronation, Mr. Biden now hears the siren song of Democrats calling out “Run, Joe, run.”

Indeed, he has a greater groundswell of support now than in either of his campaigns in 1988 and 2008. Polls show him with a healthier base of support — 20 percent to Mrs. Clinton’s 37 percent in the latest CNN/ORC survey — and advisers mapping out a theoretical path to the nomination imagine that the minute he announced, he would pick up 5 to 10 points, making it a legitimate contest, not a quixotic exercise.

But the support also means he can opt not to run and do it on his own terms — not because Mrs. Clinton eclipsed him but because it was the right decision for himself and his family. In some ways, according to friends and advisers, this most unusual exploration has a lot to do with the respect he has not always felt he received in a White House he served loyally.

“He wants respect — he’s always craved it,” said one person who has worked with Mr. Biden and asked for anonymity to speak candidly about their private discussions. “He never wanted to be Uncle Joe who is irrelevant and comes to the parties and tells old stories.”

Mr. Biden, who as a senator for 36 years had no boss, struggled at first to find his place working for Mr. Obama, who did not always appreciate his loquacious vice president’s gaffes. When Mr. Biden said in 2009 that the administration’s economic rescue efforts had a 30 percent chance of failure, Mr. Obama publicly laughed it off as another Uncle Joe moment.

Mr. Biden later raised the episode during lunch with Mr. Obama and complained about being hung out to dry. Mr. Obama accepted the grievance and made a point afterward of not publicly making fun of his vice president. He later excised a joke about Mr. Biden from a humorous talk he was supposed to give at a Washington dinner, and he had no time for those who suggested replacing Mr. Biden on the ticket in 2012.

But there were other moments of tension, if not with the president, then with his staff. During the 2012 campaign, Mr. Biden’s advisers encouraged him to meet with party donors to maintain his viability for a future run for president. The president’s campaign team, led by Jim Messina, took it badly, wondering if Mr. Biden was out for himself. Mr. Biden, in turn, bristled at anyone questioning his loyalty.

Biden Talks to Colbert About His Son

The tension blew up in May 2012 when Mr. Biden endorsed same-sex marriage in a television interview before the president took the same position. Mr. Obama’s aides, like David Plouffe, his senior adviser, were angry that he had forced the president’s hand and some suspected that it was about positioning Mr. Biden for a future campaign.

Mr. Messina and much of the Obama campaign apparatus all but enlisted with Mrs. Clinton at the start of the second term without so much as a nod at Mr. Biden. The person who worked with Mr. Biden said the vice president and his wife, Jill, were “stung” when Mr. Obama gave a joint interview with Mrs. Clinton when she left the State Department in 2013 in what looked like a passing of the baton. Still, to be sure, Mr. Biden did not ask anyone to wait for him, though some did.

As some advisers point out, every vice president feels anxious about how he is treated by the West Wing, and by all accounts, Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden have forged a genuinely close relationship, one that was on display at Beau Biden’s funeral. “Joe, you are my brother,” Mr. Obama said with evident feeling, hugging Mr. Biden and kissing him on the cheek.

“My sense is that he and the president are very close, they’re close friends, and he’s regarded by a lot of us as maybe not the closest person to the president in government but among them,” said Senator Thomas R. Carper, a Democrat from Mr. Biden’s home state, Delaware. “They have a close personal bond.”

Jared Bernstein, the vice president’s former economics adviser, said the White House worked through moments of tension. “There were times where he leaned too far over his skis, and of course nobody liked that,” he said. “But in terms of the weight of his experience and his intuitive sense of how a lot of our stuff was playing with the middle class, I think he got a lot of respect.”

The White House in recent weeks has made a point of showing that respect to Mr. Biden and letting him explore a campaign unimpeded. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said the president has entrusted Mr. Biden with some of the toughest tasks of their tenure, including the stimulus package, gun control, Iraq and Ukraine.

“Through it all, the vice president has been highly effective, which has earned him the respect and admiration of everyone who works in the West Wing, including, of course, the president,” Mr. Earnest said.

Inside Mr. Biden’s circle, some aides, like Mike Donilon, a senior adviser, are enthusiastic about a campaign, arguing that the country needs him. Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, Steve Ricchetti, is described as trying to help him navigate the process in neutral fashion but crafting a strategy to be available to him if he does run.

Some friends said Mr. Biden should go ahead with it. “I’ve known the man for 40 years — this is his destiny,” said Gary Hindes, who co-hosted a dinner at the 21 Club in New York featuring Mr. Biden this week. “He’s conducted his entire political life, I think, with the fact that he very well one day would be president.” He added: “Now, maybe he doesn’t get in. But if I were him, I would not want to look back and think I should have taken the shot.”

Others, like Ted Kaufman, Mr. Biden’s longtime friend, adviser and successor in the Senate, are said to be more dubious while trying to support Mr. Biden in his decision-making process. Advisers describe Jill Biden as broken up about Beau’s death and unenthusiastic about a campaign. Mr. Biden himself is concerned about Beau’s widow and children, advisers said.

Now he is in a position he never imagined. When he came to the White House in 2009, he told The New York Times he did not intend to run for president again and considered the vice presidency “a worthy capstone in my career.” He resolved over the ensuing years to pave the way for Beau Biden to continue the family legacy. Then his son got cancer more than a year before anyone really knew publicly, and it consumed Mr. Biden.

Friends say his emotional struggle has grown only more difficult since Beau Biden’s death, not easier. He mentions Beau in many public appearances. At 72, he is struggling to make peace with this period of his life. And the country is watching him do it.

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