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16. BIDEN TAKES COMMAND

BIDEN – THE WASHINGTON INSIDER

CONTENTS

Biden's Inauguration Day:  Unity?

Biden's Washington universe

Born into Middle America

U.S. Senator (1972-2009)

Presidential runs

Vice President (2009-2017)

The 2020 presidential campaign

The textual material on this webpage is drawn directly from my work
        America's Story – A Spiritual Journey © 2021, pages 482-485.
BIDEN'S INAUGURATION DAY:  UNITY?

For a brief but wonderful moment it appeared that America was going to be able to move on past the ugly ideological warfare that had consumed American politics for way too long … when  in his inaugural address Biden announced that he intended to serve as president for all Americans … and not just for those (the Democrats) who had voted for him.  He wanted unity to be the hallmark of his presidency.

And then, that same afternoon, he headed off to the White House and, with full photographic coverage, proceeded to sign 17 new presidential orders … all of which were designed to undo the Trump legacy and put the Democratic Party's ideological agenda in its place as national policy.

So was all this "unity" talk just political gloss?  Was Biden merely a tool of the ultra-Left wing of the Democratic Party, as some claimed?

BIDEN'S WASHINGTON UNIVERSE

Actually, it must be pointed out that as much as Trump was a total "Washington outsider" – and was hated for it – the new President Joe Biden was a "Washington insider" – and admired by the Washington political Establishment (most notably the Washington press corps) for it.   From age 30 on, when he was first elected to the U.S. Senate (as its 6th youngest freshman senator ever!) representing nearby Delaware, Biden had lived for 48 years in a world connecting his relatively nearby Delaware home with his job in Washington.  In short, the "universe" that Biden lived in, and had done so for almost half a century, was a very singular universe, one that worked in a very precise, Capitol Hill way, backed up by Washington's huge bureaucratic universe.  This was the world such as Biden knew it, from end to end.  Indianapolis, Kansas City, Fort Worth, New Orleans, etc. had no personal meaning for Biden.  As a Washingtonian, Middle America was just simply not his world.  True, there was Wilmington, the one part of America outside of Washington that Biden was familiar with.  But that served him simply as a Washington suburb.

And just as he was a Washington insider, so also was he a solidly Democratic Party veteran.  The party too was his world, a force that fed his spirit, shaped his vision, and commanded his total loyalties.

BORN INTO MIDDLE AMERICA

Biden was born in November of 1942 – thus qualifying him as a socially compliant "Silent" rather than as a renegade "Boomer" – to an Irish-Catholic family.  These two items would also define him deeply as he moved forward in life.  His father was a hardworking furnace cleaner in Scranton, Pennsylvania.  Then, when Biden was 13, the family moved to Delaware, where the father worked as a successful used-car salesman. In short, Biden was raised in very typical Middle American circumstances. It was a good start.

But he was also a quite ambitious youth, who sought greater things for himself in life.  He worked hard to earn the money so as to be able to attend the prestigious Archmere Academy.  Here he performed well as a student and athlete.  He then went on to the University of Delaware, ostensibly to major in political science and history, though it would appear that his real major was sports, girls and parties.  And that is what led him at spring break first to Florida and then Nassau, where he met Neilia Hunter – and got more serious again about things.  He brought up his grades, and was accepted in 1965 to Syracuse University Law School – where he would also live close to Neilia.  Indeed, the two would marry the next year.

Unfortunately, try as he might, he was not a great competitor in the world of legal academics, and ranked grade-wise 76 out of his graduating class of 85 students.  But in 1969 he passed the bar exam, took a position as a public defender, and subsequently formed a law partnership with a friend.   However, he found corporate law to be uninteresting and criminal law poorly paid. Thus the very next year (1970) he ran as the Democratic Party candidate and was elected to the New Castle County Council, beginning his public career.

U.S. SENATOR (1972-2009)

Most amazingly, at only age 29, he decided to run for the U.S. Senate against the veteran Republican Caleb Boggs.  Actually, Boggs had wanted to step down from the position, and ran again only upon the urging of his fellow Republicans.  But Biden was the ambitious one, he and his family working hard to bring him to public notice, and by election time the next November Biden managed to pull ahead of Boggs.

And then, before that month was out, deep tragedy hit Biden and his family, when his wife and daughter were killed in an auto accident, and his two boys Beau (age 3) and Hunter (age 2) hurt badly.

It is easy to understand the anger Biden was feeling against God, and his numbness when he thought of his approaching responsibilities as U.S. Senator.  He thought about simply quitting ... even life itself.

But Senate leader Mike Mansfield worked hard to get Biden not to quit but instead to take up his calling as U.S. Senator.  And so he did.  But as it was, Biden would be sworn into office, not in Washington but at the hospital bedside of his son Beau.  (Biden would meet three years later in 1975 and marry in 1977 his second wife, Jill Jacobs).

In the Senate his career path was fairly typical, as were also his Democratic Party loyalties, especially during the latter part of the 1970s when he came to work closely with the Carter Administration.  During the 1980s he achieved the position as the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in time to "Bork" Reagan's Supreme Court appointment (Bork was too conservative for Biden's taste), and then in 1991, as that committee's actual chair, he was one of the opposing votes to the Supreme Court appointment of Clarence Thomas.

But he was also active on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, opposing Bush, Sr.'s decision to intervene in Kuwait against Saddam Hussein.  But he was much more supportive of Clinton's decision to get involved in Yugoslavia, in fact, now as ranking minority member of the committee, he advocated a strong stand in Bosnia even before Clinton himself had decided to do so.  He would also be a strong supporter of American intervention in Kosovo.

Then in the years of the Bush, Jr. Administration, Biden served as the Committee's actual chairman, at least during the years 2001-2003 and 2007-2009.  Initially he was a strong supporter of Bush's intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, then backed away from that position, offering the proposal that Iraq be simply federated into three different ethnic regions (Arab Sunni, Arab Shi'ite, and Kurdish Sunni).  But he could gather no serious support for the proposal.  Then in 2007, he found himself strongly opposed to the "troop surge" in Iraq, which to his surprise (and the surprise of many) actually quieted things down in Iraq.

PRESIDENTIAL RUNS

Then in 2007, something he had long had his eye on, namely the U.S. presidency, seemed to be a possible goal to be pursued.

Actually he had undertaken just such an effort back in 1987, and had the effort backfire badly when reports came out that he had plagiarized a law school paper and had exaggerated greatly his standing at graduation, the negative publicity being the probable cause of a serious life-threatening brain aneurysms and a pulmonary embolism, which had him hospitalized in February and then again in May.  He dropped out of the race, and was even away from the Senate for seven months.

And now he tried again in 2007 as the Bush, Jr. presidency was coming to a close.  But he found himself up against strong Democratic Party contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  Thus it was that he dropped out of the race early on when the Iowa primary brought him only one percent of the vote!

VICE PRESIDENT (2009-2017)

But Obama needed someone to "balance" his ticket, and asked Biden to join him as his running mate.  And so Biden was elected Vice President in 2008 and re-elected as such four years later.

However during his second term, Biden found himself to be less strategic to the Obama Administration.

But even more hurtful to Biden was the loss to cancer in 2015 of his 46-year-old son Beau. Beau had conducted himself most admirably in the field of law, military service and presently as Delaware's Attorney General, earlier turning down the idea of running for the US Senate – because he did not want such a gain simply because of his family "legacy."  The death of Beau came as a huge, crushing blow to everyone.  And it was a reason that Biden announced that he would not be running for public office in 2016.  He would throw his support to Hillary.

THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

The next couple of years Biden busied himself teaching (University of Pennsylvania), writing a memoir (Promise Me, Dad), and doing a lot of public speaking, not only keeping himself visible before the public eye but making him quite rich from speaker's fees and a writing contract.

However, as the 2020 election season came around, he was ready to announce his candidacy (April 2019), even though if elected he would take office at the age of 78 – an unheard-of age to be taking on such a responsibility.  And he would be running against the very aggressive Trump, who had the reputation of knocking down anything that got in his way.

But run Biden did, finally securing the Democratic Party presidential candidacy, and then going on to win the election.



Go on to the next section:  Biden Pushes Forward His Progressivist Program

  Miles H. Hodges