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Joe Biden: The likeable joe

Garrulous and experienced, America's Vice-President is where he seems most
at ease – at Obama's side but not at his heels

By Rupert Cornwell

*Saturday, 13 March 2010*

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'Yes, he puts his foot in it on occasion, but in a buttoned-up city that can
be refreshing.'

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The moment when Joe Biden began to metamorphose from senator into the future
Vice-President can be precisely dated, to 26 April 2007, in the midst of one
of those mostly forgettable TV debates between the candidates for the
Democratic nomination the following year. Indeed, it may be traced to a
single word.

Would he have the self-discipline to be president, the famously loquacious
and gaffe-prone Biden was asked. Quick as a flash came the reply, a clipped
and terse "Yes". The audience, well aware of the senator's propensity to
give windy and interminable answers to the simplest of questions, howled
with laughter – but the point was made.

Biden, of course, didn't win the nomination. That went to a charismatic
opponent whom with typically engaging crassness, he had a few months earlier
described as "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and
bright and clean and a nice-looking guy". But although he withdrew from the
race after finishing a distant fifth in the Iowa caucuses that kicked off
the 2008 primary season, Biden was generally adjudged to have fought an
impressive campaign. Even more importantly, Barack Obama had quietly marked
his card.

During that summer, candidate Obama told his defeated rival that he wanted
him in the administration, should he win, either as secretary of state or
vice-president. Biden hesitated, wondering whether either post was
preferable to his current job as chairman of the Senate foreign relations
committee. But when he was asked to be Obama's running mate, Biden again
said yes. This week, it could be argued, the transformation became complete.
On Tuesday evening the 47th Vice-Presidentof the United
States<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/joe-biden-the-likeable-joe-1920686.html#>
turned
up 90 minutes late for dinner with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of
Israel. Had this happened in an earlier Biden life, the delay would surely
have been attributed to a scheduled five-minute speech that turned into a
rambling and self-indulgent hour's worth.

Not now. Biden's tardiness was an angry and calculated response to the
extraordinary embarrassment inflicted on the highest ranking visitor
despatched by President Obama, leader of the country that is Israel's most
vital ally. Hours earlier, the Vice-President was talking about a new
opportunity for progress between Israelis and Palestinians – only for the
former then to announce it would build 1,600 homes in East Jerusalem, whose
future is perhaps the largest single obstacle in the way of a peace deal.

Diplomatic two-finger salutes don't come much cruder. But Biden, at least as
far as can be judged from a 5,000-mile distance, made the best of a very bad
job. He condemned the planned new settlements with characteristic bluntness,
and then delivered his dinner snub. But in a speech on Thursday he made the
case for peace, powerfully and without bitterness. Some will say he should
have gone home on the spot. That, however, would be to ignore the reality of
the US relationship with Israel. If these latest Israeli/Palestinian talks
are stillborn, it won't be Joe Biden's fault.

One reason of course is that the man is so hard to dislike. Yes, he puts his
foot in it on occasion, but in a buttoned-up city that can be refreshing.
For years, Biden was living proof of the old adage that in Washington, a
gaffe is when a politician by accident blurts out the truth. Since he became
Vice-President his record has improved, but the old Biden sometimes
resurfaces – as it did at the height of the 2009 swine flu scare. It wasn't
just about going to Mexico, the epicentre of the pandemic, he opined to a TV
interviewer, "It's if you're in a confined
aircraft<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/joe-biden-the-likeable-joe-1920686.html#>;
when one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft." White
House aides had to spend days dousing the ire of the already struggling
airline industry.

But Obama knew exactly what he was getting when he selected Biden, rightly
concluding that the pros outweighed the cons. Born in Pennsylvania to a
Catholic family of modest means, Biden could connect to white working-class
voters in rust-belt states in a way Obama never could. Aged 66 when he took
office, Biden moreover had no further political ambitions of his own –
removing one frequent complication to relations between a vice-president and
his boss.

No less important (so it seemed at the time) was Biden's vast experience in
the Senate. When he was elected in November 1972 at the age of 29, he was
the youngest Senator in history. By the time he resigned in January 2009, he
had just won a seventh term, making him the 14th longest-serving Senator in
the country's history.

Of those 36 years, he spent 16 as chairman of the high-profile judiciary
committee, before becoming the senior Democrat on, and later chairman of,
the foreign relations committee. Biden might have been to the centre-left on
domestic issues, but in international affairs he was – and remains – a
liberal interventionist of the JFK mould. Like almost every Democrat, Biden
voted against the first Gulf War in 1991, but became a passionate believer
in US involvement in the Balkans to help Bosnia and then Kosovo. At one
point, he called Slobodan Milosevic a "war criminal" to his face. In October
2002 he supported going to war again against Saddam Hussein, but by 2004
declared his vote had been a mistake.

Even so, he was popular with his Republican colleagues, often working
quietly across the aisle with foreign policy moderates like Richard Lugar
and Chuck Hagel. "I may be resigning from the Senate today," Biden declared
in a surprisingly restrained farewell speech from the floor on 15 January
2009, "but I will always be a Senate man." As such, Biden appeared
especially well placed to help to build the new era of political comity
promised by Obama during the campaign. That this has not materialised was no
fault of his; rather of the partisanship that poisons everything in
Washington.

Today, the vice-presidency seems fitting climax to a career that, even had
it finished in the Senate, would have been remarkable enough. The Biden
story has also been one of hurdles and crushing setbacks overcome, both
private and professional. There is the disaster even people in Britain know
about: the plagiarising of then Labour leader Neil Kinnock that brought his
1988 bid for the White House to a humiliating end. Then there are the
private agonies: the stutter that the youthful Biden had to overcome; the
tragedy when his first wife and daughter were killed in a car crash a month
after he was elected in 1972; and two bouts of brain surgery in 1988 to
correct life-threatening aneurisms. Set against such events, all things are
relative, even the present tribulations of the Obama administration.

Biden now is in his comfort zone. By all accounts he works well with Obama.
He is an influential Vice-President – but not in the grim, secretive style
of his predecessor
DickCheney<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/joe-biden-the-likeable-joe-1920686.html#>,
perhaps the most powerful holder ever of the office. He has a very competent
staff, and retains many close friendships on Capitol Hill. Indeed, those
contacts are widely credited with securing passage of the President's
bitterly contested $787bn economic stimulus last February.

His brief and workload stretch across the board. One moment Biden is
handling the vetting and confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's first
nominee to the Supreme Court, the next he is checking that infrastructure
money contained in the stimulus package was being properly spent – and this
week he's been on a mission to Israel that would have been sensitive even
without the settlements row, discussing not just Palestine but also Iran.

His most valuable role, however, is as in-house contrarian. Biden's
frankness make's him an ideal devil's advocate – on Afghanistan for
instance, when he made the case for a targeted anti-terrorist strategy,
rather than the broader surge for which Obama ultimately opted.

He's not always right. But far more important, he has not emerged as a
Cheney-like point of friction and resentment. This administration is working
smoothly on the foreign policy front, with none of the open feuding that
bedevilled the George W
Bush<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/joe-biden-the-likeable-joe-1920686.html#>
White
House. For that thank, in part at least, Joe Biden. "It's easy being
vice-president," he likes to say, "like being the grandpa and not the
parent." And of course, nobody minds if grandpa sometimes says something
silly.

*A life in brief*

*Born:* 20 November 1942, Scranton, Pennsylvania.

*Family:* The eldest child of Joseph Biden Snr, a used-car salesman, and
Catherine Finnegan. He has two brothers and a sister. His first wife Neila
was killed along with their daughter in an automobile accident in 1972. He
also had two sons with her. He remarried, to Jill Jacobs, in 1977. They have
one daughter.

*Education: *He attended Archmere Academy in Claymont and the University of
Delaware, where he gained a BA with a double major in history and political
science. Graduated from Syracuse University College of Law in 1968.

*Career:* He was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1969, becoming a public
defender before starting his own firm. He was elected as senator for
Delaware from 1973 until his resignation in January 2009, following his
election to the vice-presidency under Obama. He unsuccessfully sought the
Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008.

*He says:* "There is no space between the US and Israel when it comes to
Israel's security."

*They say:* "The best thing about Joe is that when we get everybody
together, he really forces people to think and defend their positions, to
look at things from every angle, and that is very valuable for me." Barack
Obama
--
Eric D. Schwerin
Rosemont Seneca Partners
(202) 333-1880
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.co