Obama's Link to the Common Man

Joe Biden has never completely gained the respect of Democratic voters, who are embarrassed by his miscues and attribute to him very little political weight in White House decision-making. But in any case, something has changed this year for the vice president, whom the Obama camp has been using in the campaign as an antidote for the disenchantment of the white working class with the scarce economic successes of the president.

Last autumn, some Democratic strategists encouraged Obama to rid himself of Biden and replace him with the charismatic Hillary Clinton. But what’s certain is that his lieutenant is serving as a useful counterweight to the president — above all in Midwestern states like Ohio, where Obama barely won four years ago and where now he must preserve the support of less-educated voters who are judging if they should vote for his rival.

The president is too cold and intellectual of a politician to recapture this sector of the white electorate. That is why the people around him deployed in his stead the vice president, scorned in Washington as a loudmouth but admired by voters who share his age and humble origins in an industrial county in Pennsylvania.

Biden is one of the most veteran politicians in the United States. Four decades ago, he was elected senator for the first time when he was barely 29 and was re-elected seven times before he assumed the vice presidency. He embarked on the race for the White House on two occasions (1988 and 2008), but he dropped out very early in both races and made better use of his talents in the halls of the Senate than in campaign events.

At the beginning, Biden said in 2008 that he would not accept the vice presidency; he came to doubt the aptitude of Obama to occupy the White House. But he quickly changed his mind, and since then, he has learned to forge a cordial relationship with the president, who has utilized him to negotiate with House Republicans and as a special foreign envoy.

The vice president carried out the task without major errors and has taken advantage of his Senate experience to present himself as the best person to negotiate with the Republicans. Two factors have earned him the admiration of the experts, who consider him an efficient second-in-command in spite of his off-color remarks in the occasional campaign event.

“Walter Mondale once said that the two most important jobs of the vice president are serving as an intermediary and being the president’s closest advisor,” Joel K. Goldstein, professor at the University of St. Louis and top expert in the vice presidency, recently told El Mundo.

“I believe that Biden has done well in both aspects. He was in charge of the troop withdrawal in Iraq and of the implementation of Obama’s economic plans. He has also helped to negotiate with the Republicans and has attained agreements that were considered very difficult. My impression is that he tends to remind the president of details that other advisors don’t know or say. He doesn’t mind saying what he thinks and that is very important. And another important thing is that he has a certain way with people. The Republicans who disagree with his ideas appreciate and respect him.”*

Biden was raised in an industrial city in Pennsylvania by a Catholic family with Irish roots. His father was born into a wealthy family. But several financial mishaps led him to ruin and obligated him to live for a time with his wife’s parents. Joe Senior took a job as a used car salesman and moved to Wilmington, the city in Delaware where his son still lives today on weekends.

The young Biden liked football better than his studies. He stood out for his gift with people and his skill on his college football team, but not for his academic efforts or achievements, which led him to graduate at the bottom of his class.

The excesses that he saw in his mother’s family quickly turned him into a teetotaler; he worked as a lawyer before trying his luck in politics. In Aug. 1966, he married Neilia Hunter, a young lady whom he met on a vacation in the Bahamas. The couple had three children, but they were broken by a tragedy. A truck crashed into the family car. Neilia and her young daughter were killed instantly. The two other Biden children survived, but they were in critical condition for several months.

The accident occurred in 1972, a few weeks after Biden was elected Senator at the age of 29. Those close to him thought that he would abandon politics; he himself confessed that he almost did so because of the emotional trauma and the challenge of raising two children without the help of his wife. Several years later on a blind date, Biden met his second wife Jill, a teacher with whom he had a daughter and who helped him recover his interest in politics.

Biden’s Senate career was marked by significant events. He presided over the Judiciary Committee during the appointment of Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork to the Supreme Court and boosted his international experience as member of the Foreign Affairs Commission. He often bragged of being one of the poorest members of Congress, a detail that he attributed to a life completely dedicated to public service.

He tried twice to run for the White House. His 1988 campaign sank when it emerged that he had plagiarized separate speeches given by Robert Kennedy and British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. Four years ago, he was crushed by the titanic battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but also by his own mistakes in the debates that were held in the early days of the primaries.

A few months ago, he said that he had not ruled out running for president a third time, four years from now. Many took it as a joke and remembered that at that time, he would be on the verge of turning 74. But who knows? Right now Joe seems to be in top form, and perhaps Hillary has stopped hearing the siren song calling her to compete again in 2016.

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified in English.