In "Biden’s campaign might start a lot like how 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’'ends," the Washington Post's David Von Drehle presents a snarky, ambiguous and, regrettably, often realistic profile of Joe Biden's challenges.
Biden’s problem is that he comes from … a world where people strike compromises (he has struck plenty) and make occasional mistakes (he has made a bunch)….
Unless the public is in a forgiving mood, however, compromises and mistakes are just so much ammunition in today’s campaigns…. And frankly, nothing about his two 
previous presidential campaigns — in 1988 and 2008 — sparks confidence that he will be deft in his own defense….
In [Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid], we don’t see Butch and Sundance shot to pieces. Director George Roy Hill elected to freeze the frame in their last moment of glory. Biden’s long wait to plunge into this campaign might be his version of that decision — a pause to savor his record before it’s savaged, to measure his reputation before it is torn down.
It's impossible to tell if Von Drehle is lamenting or condemning, but on the whole, his column is suggestive of what's to come from the chattering class. What's commentary worthy, for instance, in noting that a politician made "a bunch" of mistakes over a half century? Biden had been in the Senate for 13 years before Pete Buttigieg was born, and nature is cruel in its demand that humans must make mistakes. Biden has had 50 years to do so, which means, comparatively, decades more of experience from which to learn.
Let us face the historical fact that many of Biden's "mistakes" were popular positions at the time — e.g., Bill Clinton's crime bill. Ebony magazine, Rep. Charles Rangel, Rep. Kweisi Mfume and a majority of the Congressional Black Caucus all supported the Clinton administration's Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Biden's pro vote was no mistake in 1994. It was mainstream and righteous, and only the journalistic crime of presentism portrays it in any other way.
What's more, Von Drehle's remark that Biden's delayed entry into the presidential race was perhaps "a pause to savor his record before it’s savaged, to measure his reputation before it is torn down," is simply worthless speculation. Von Drehle is ordinarily quite good as a columnist, but his reflection on Biden's sentiment was uncommonly lazy (in amplifying his word count?). Biden is looking forward, not "savoring his record" — which Von Drehle just informed us was a self-harmful one for the former vice president.
Still, Von Drehle is correct in assessing the electorate's squirrelly idiosyncrasies. They also supported, say, the 1994 crime bill, yet supportive politicians of the last century are now expected to redeem themselves and repent. Pols such as Mayor Pete are off the hook, though; he was 12 years of age at the time.
I pity Joe Biden in having to countenance columnists who are desperate for something to say. Because pretty much anything goes.