People in the news

Joseph R. Biden

Vice President (since January 2009)

(Marvin Joseph/TWP)

Why He Matters

Biden prides himself on being an average Joe. He grew up in a middle-class home in Scranton, Pa., and was a mediocre student in college and law school. He has never bought a house in Washington, D.C., instead taking the train home each night to Delaware.

But this everyman is also a bona fide Washington insider - he has spent more than half of his life in the nation's capital. The six-term Senator and former chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees is famous for his cringe-inducing gaffes and propensity for wordiness. But colleagues say he is a gifted legislator who knows how to get laws passed. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) called him "a superb strategist" who has sponsored landmark anti-crime legislation, overseen two Supreme Court nominations and shaped a slew of foreign policy issues.

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Background

At a Glance

Career History: U.S. Senator (1972 to 2008); New Castle County Council, Member (1970 to 1972); Attorney (1968 to 1970)
Birthday: Nov. 20, 1942
Hometown: Scranton, PA.
Alma Mater: University of Delaware, B.A., 1965; Syracuse Law School, J.D., 1968

Spouse: Dr. Jill Biden
Religion: Roman Catholic
Office: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NWWashington, DC 20500; 202-456-1111
Website

Path to Power

Biden was born on Nov. 20, 1942, in Scranton, Pa., the oldest of four children. His father suffered a series of business setbacks that eventually forced the family to move in with Biden's grandparents.

The Bidens moved to the suburbs of Wilmington, Del., when Biden was a teenager. There, he practiced speeches night after night with his sister Valerie Biden Owens to get over a stutter. Valerie also ran her brother's first political campaign - for student council president - which he won. Biden wasn't a gifted student in high school, but he was an outstanding athlete.

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Biden received his undergraduate degree from the University of Delaware. While on spring break in the Bahamas his senior year, he met Neilia Hunter on a beach. He fell, as he described it, "ass over tin cup in love," and enrolled in Syracuse Law School, where she was a student.

Biden struggled from his early days in upstate New York. In his first semester, he failed a class because he didn't cite a law review article in a paper. He claimed the borrowing of material was a mistake and was allowed to retake the course. The school eventually included a letter attesting to his honesty in his permanent file. Still, he graduated near the bottom of his class in 1968.

Biden returned to Wilmington with Neilia, his new bride. He worked for a few years as a criminal defense lawyer before turning to politics. In 1970, he won his first campaign for a position on the New Castle County Council. In that position, he made friends with prominent local Democrats, who eventually asked him to serve as the sacrificial lamb in running against popular Senate incumbent J. Caleb Boggs (R).

In 1972, when he wasn't even legally old enough to be a Senator, Biden launched his improbable Senate campaign with his family in key roles, because, Owens said, "we were the only ones who thought he had a chance." Influential Wilmington Democrat Ted Kaufman told Biden flat-out that he couldn't win.

A Labor Day poll that showed Biden down by 35 points didn't dampen the nascent campaign's spirits, or their grassroots organizing. Slowly, Biden charmed Kaufman and others, who agreed to help. On election night, he won with 51 percent of the vote.

A few weeks later, Biden was interviewing potential staffers for his Washington, D.C., office when he received a call: his family had been in a deadly car accident. His wife and 13-month-old daughter Naomi were killed immediately by a drunk driver while out Christmas shopping. Beau and Hunter, Biden's two sons, were seriously injured.

Biden refused to leave his sons' sides for the next several weeks. He only slipped out of the hospital once - to attend his wife's memorial service - and was sworn into his Senate seat in their recovery room.

Biden considered resigning from the Senate before even officially starting, but his family encouraged him to go to the Capitol. The new Senator's sister moved in with her brother to help him care for his boys, and Biden's brother, Jimmy, drove him back and forth to Washington. Kaufman helped Biden put his political affairs in order, and accepted a temporary chief of staff position.

Biden took to the Senate, quickly rising in its ranks. However, he never strayed too far from Delaware, returning home from Washington, D.C., every night first by car and then eventually by train.

Biden considered running for president in 1980 and 1984, even filling out paperwork for the New Hampshire primary. However, he decided to wait until Ronald Reagan's second term finished before tossing his hat into the ring.

The Delaware Democrat became Judiciary Committee Chairman in 1987, just in time to chair the Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings with their attendant controversies. That same year, he launched his first presidential campaign. Biden's compelling personal story and youthful energy made him an early favorite, but his run was quickly bogged down by controversy.

During one campaign event, Biden forgot to attribute a quote in his stump speech to the author. His staff decided not to address the issue, assuming that reporters would understand that it was a slip-up. However, opponent Michael Dukakis quickly circulated a memo highlighting the mistake. Things only got worse when opponents dug up the cheating charges from his law school years. The story dominated the news for the next several days with critics charging he was a plagiarist.

Biden also struggled to balance his campaign obligations with his demands as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, where he was overseeing the unsuccessful and controversial Bork nomination hearings. Biden ended his run in September 1987, explaining that his campaign had been overtaken by "the exaggerated shadow of past mistakes" and that he wanted to focus on defeating Bork's nomination.

Just a few weeks later, Biden was rushed to the hospital with a cranial aneurysm that almost killed him. After ending his presidential bid, Biden spent the next several years recovering his reputation. He cut back on speaking engagements and television appearances, instead meeting with foreign leaders and developing his foreign policy portfolio. Though he opposed the first Gulf War in 1991, Biden worked throughout the 1990s to make Democrats more comfortable with the idea of using military force. He lobbied President Bill Clinton to stop the slaughter of Serbians in the former Yugoslavia. In doing so, he helped popularize the mainstream Democratic foreign policy view of liberal interventionism.

He was named the ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1997, and became the panel's chairman in 2001.

2008 Campaign

In 2008, Biden launched his presidential campaign to little fanfare. In fact, he spent much of the first week of the campaign apologizing for calling Obama "articulate and bright and clean."

A lack of enthusiasm by voters was a running theme of his candidacy. He failed to drum up the support received by other well-financed candidates. His run is mostly remembered for some snappy one-liners during primary debates, like his wry observation that Rudolph W. Giuliani only mentions "a noun, a verb and 9/11" in his speeches.

Biden finished fifth in the Iowa caucuses and left the race without endorsing a candidate. But Biden began a shadow campaign for the role of vice president on a Democratic ticket. When Brian Williams of NBC asked whether he would accept that job, Biden said "of course I'll say yes." He and aides also launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to sell Obama on Biden's strengths. It worked, and he was selected as Obama's running mate on August 24, 2008.

Reaction to the choice was well-recieved, as Biden was seen as an experienced foreign policy hand who could shore up the gaps in the first-term Senator's resume. Some worried, however, that Biden's propensity for gaffes would make him a vulnerable target for Republicans. During the general election, Biden inadvertantly told a paraplegic to stand up (he later apologized) and also said that Obama's defeated primary rival and current Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) might have been a better vice presidential pick than he was. However, Biden was a generally strong competitor, performing well in the debate and bringing thousands of people to his rallies

In December 2008, Biden was named as chair of the White House Task Force on Working Families, designed to improve the quality of life for middle class families by expanding education opportunities, improving incomes, and creating better retirement security plans.

Though he will now live full-time in No. 1 Observatory Circle on the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory, the new vice president and his wife, Jill, will keep their Wilmington home.

The Issues

In a series of interviews with the New Yorker, Biden sketched out his vision for the vice presidency. He says he would like to play a role in all key policy decisions and serve as chief liaison to Congress.

Six months in, that has largely turned out to be the case. Biden was tasked with convincing six Republicans to support the administration's economic stimulus package. He was able to convince three to do so, which made the difference between passage and failure. In February 2009, Obama named Biden to oversee the implementation of the $787 billion economic stimulus package.

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Biden also played a key role in convincing Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) to switch his party affiliation. And Obama has tapped the former Senator to push hard for healthcare.

Though foreign policy is one of Biden's strengths, he has not been given a lead role. But his allies say Biden is in the room for all major policy decisions.

Iraq

In June 2009, Obama tapped Biden to serve as his pointman on Iraq.

Biden initially supported the Iraq war, though he said at the time that the conflict should be limited to ending Iraq's weapons program. He later said he regretted his vote. "The president did not level with us," he told Politico.com.

The Senator has since been fiercely critical of the conduct of the war. During the 2008 presidential race, he called for withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq within one year. "Everything I care about, everything I've devoted my life to - everything - is impeded by the continuation of this war," Biden said at a speech.

Biden also tried to find creative solutions to the ethnic conflict dividing the country. He proposed that Iraq should be divided into Sunni, Shia and Kurdish regions, a plan the Economist described as "harebrained," but that other foreign policy experts took seriously.

Afghanistan

Biden was one of the chief skeptics of the December 2009 30,000-troop surge in Afghanistan.

During debate over the way forward, Biden circulated memos outlining the alternatives to troop escalation.

He quickly became the administration's most vocal skeptic, rearranging his schedule to attend meetings where he voiced his discomfort with the war strategy. "Mr. Biden asked tough questions about whether there was any intelligence showing that the Taliban posed a threat to American territory," the New York Times reported. He also argued for a deadline, saying that two years should be enough time to determine whether any troop increase was working.

Foreign Policy

The former chair of the Foreign Relations committee has a deeper understanding of foreign policy than almost any other lawmaker, and has managed to toe the fine line between being fiercely critical of the Bush administration and maintaining good relationships with Republicans including Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Biden is particularly interested in Eastern Europe. He is on a first-name basis with Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president who invited him to visit his country during Russia's siege. Saakashvili invited him to Georgia only hours after Russia invaded, in an effort to rally international support.

Fighting Crime

Biden has carved out a niche for himself as a Democratic crime fighter. His most prominent bill was probably the 1994 anti-crime bill, which provided billions of federal dollars for additional policemen, anti-crime programs and for building bigger prisons. The law's most controversial measure was the ban on some assault rifles, which has long been reviled by opponents of gun control.

He also spearheaded a 1995 measure to stop domestic violence against women. The bill poured $1.6 billion into programs to identify and protect at-risk women and prosecute perpetrators.

Judiciary Committee

As chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1987 to 1995, Biden presided over some prominent flops. But he also passed a series of important and controversial legislation.

Biden handled the high-profile confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and nominee Robert Bork. He struggled to maintain the hearings' focus on judicial philosophy instead of expending time on personal attacks advanced by liberal advocacy groups.

He refused to subpoena Bork's private video-rental records (some hoped they would prove Bork had a hidden passion for pornography) and criticized Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) for charging that Bork would force women into backroom abortions.

But Biden came under criticism in 1991 during Thomas' nomination hearing for not thoroughly examining law professor Anita Hill's accusations that Thomas had sexually harassed her. Though he ultimately allowed Hill to testify, he would not bring three corroborating witnesses, a move that probably enabled Thomas to be confirmed. Still conservatives criticize Biden to this day for heralding an era of personal attack politics in Washington.

The Network

Biden's three decades in the Senate have allowed him to develop close ties with many fellow Senators. He called Christopher J. Dodd, (D-Conn.) his "closest personal friend in public life" and said he has known Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband President Bill Clinton for more than 20 years. The three are quite close - Clinton once told Biden: "I think you and Bill were separated at birth."

He and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass) have also been called best friends.

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