A contrite Senator Joe Biden ended his campaign for president in 1987 with an admission he cribbed remarks from other politicians and embellished his academic achievements.

“I’m angry with myself,” he said then, “for having been put in the position — put myself in the position — of having to make a choice” to drop out or continue his crippled campaign.

A similar current dilemma appears to be gathering, with President Biden ensnared in a comparative controversy with former President Trump over mishandling classified government documents.

Should he commit to seeking reelection in 2024 or let the younger, less scarred crop of Democrats battle for the party’s presidential nomination?

Biden’s second term intent got an unexpected boost with Tuesday’s news that a lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence discovered “a small number of documents that could potentially contained sensitive or classified information” at his Carmel, Indiana, home.

Pence said he asked for the search in light of the other document discoveries. The FBI collected the classified information on Jan. 19. Pence promised to “cooperate fully” with federal authorities.

Biden downplays the sprouting strife over the discovery of classified documents from his U.S. Senate and vice president years at a private office in Washington and at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

“There’s no there there,” he firmly declared, after a third search — by the FBI for 13 hours — of his Wilmington home last week turned up yet more papers with classified markings.

Smoking gun or not, Biden cannot escape juxtaposition with national concern over classified documents stored at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida — some of which the National Archives retrieved voluntarily last January and June, and others from a court-authorized FBI search in August.

Attorney General Merrick Garland recognized as much by promptly appointing a special counsel to investigate Biden’s handling of classified material. Garland appointed a special counsel to the Trump case last year. So far he has taken no action in the Pence discovery.

There are differences between Biden and Trump in the volume of classified documents, time they have been stored in private places and resistance to relinquishing them.

Trump had more than 300 classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago from his time in the White House. He resisted request for many of them after he left office on Jan. 20, 2021. That prompted the FBI’s surprise subpoena search, which Trump called “a witch hunt.”

At least six files and five pages marked classified were found at the two Biden locations, including his home garage containing his 1967 Chevy Corvette Stingray. Some date to his Senate tenure before eight years as vice president. Biden has cooperated with the government search teams.

What the Pence, Biden and Trump classified documents contain, if unauthorized persons accessed them, and how this may have jeopardized national security may remain unknown — unless the Justice Department pursues prosecution.

Still, the optics of the sensitive document discoveries at nongovernment locations and associated political polemics could shape the next presidential race.

Biden has been under pressure from some Democrats to refrain from running again, given his octogenarian age and changing voter demographics. They prefer a younger candidate in 2024 given the contrast with a possible Republican presidential opponent — such as Florida Governor Rick DeSantis, 44, or former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, 51.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, have said Biden holds ultimate responsibility for the classified documents found in his possession even if an aide or attorney misplaced them.

Biden is familiar with intraparty blowback forcing a reluctant decision.

In his ill-fated 1987 presidential campaign he initially misjudged reaction to disclosures that in a debate and other public remarks he lifted without attribution portions of speeches by Neil Kinnock (British Party Labor leader), Robert F. Kennedy and Hubert H. Humphrey.

Biden called it “much ado about nothing.”

But responding to journalists questions, Biden later admitted as a student at Syracuse University’s College of Law he borrowed without quotation or citation five pages of a law review article for a paper he authored. He successfully pleaded to continue his studies, receiving an F in the course.

Democrat pressure on Biden mounted when a video clip of his feisty exchange with a New Hampshire voter disclosed exaggerations about attending law school on a full academic scholarship and graduating in the top half of his class. News reports verified he studied on a partial need-based scholarship and finished in the bottom 12 percent of his class.

Biden blamed the embellishments on “faulty memory.” Yet the resulting fallout caused him to drop out of the presidential primary race.