Joseph R. Biden

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.

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