The wounded warrior comes back to win his final battle

By J Brooks Spector• 6 November 2020

 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden takes his face mask off as he arrives to speak one day after America voted in the presidential election, on November 04, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden spoke as votes are still being counted in his tight race against incumbent U.S. President Donald Trump which remains too close to call. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)  Less

By the time you read this, it is possible that former vice-president Joseph Robinette Biden Jr will have gone from being presumed winner of the 2020 race to becoming president-elect of the United States. He would be inaugurated as the nation’s 46th president on 20 January 2021, and, at 78, the oldest leader ever.

He was born on 20 November 1942 into a working-class family and lived in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and then Wilmington, Delaware. Educated at the University of Delaware and the Syracuse University law school, he married his first wife, Neilia Hunter, several years after they met in the Bahamas where they were both on holiday during the spring university break.

Graduating from law school in 1968, Biden moved to Wilmington to practise law, but soon became active in the Democratic Party. Two years later, he was elected to the New Castle County Council, before running and winning his Senate seat in 1972.

In 1972, still just 29 years old, and months before he was actually eligible to become a senator (the Constitution stipulates a senator must be at least 30), he waged an unlikely but successful campaign against the long-serving, popular senator, J Caleb Boggs. Before he took the oath of office, however, Neilia and their daughter Naomi were killed in a traffic accident, leaving Biden to care for his two surviving sons as he began his Senate career.

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Biden says of that time: “I began to understand how despair led people to just cash in; how suicide wasn’t just an option but a rational option … I felt God had played a horrible trick on me, and I was angry.”

Following the tragedy, and unlike most members of Congress, he continued to live in Wilmington, He commuted to Washington, DC, by train, returning home at night to care for his sons.

Joe Biden, right, a Democratic senator from Delaware and vice presidential running mate of presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, walks with his son Joseph “Beau” Biden, attorney general of Delaware, on day three of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Denver, Colorado, U.S., on Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008. The DNC ends on Aug. 28. (Photo by Matthew Staver/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Biden has regularly credited his parents with instilling in him an inner toughness, a belief in hard work, and perseverance. He says his father told him: “Champ, the measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down, but how quickly he gets up.” Coming home after a fight with other students, he says his mother told him: “Bloody their nose so you can walk down the street the next day!”

As a child, Biden struggled with a stutter, which he tamed by memorising long poems  and repeating them to himself in front of a mirror. One of the most affecting moments at the 2020 Democratic National Convention came when a young man, also a stutterer, explained on national television how he had drawn inspiration in dealing with the problem from a meeting with the former vice-president.

Biden attended Archmere Academy, a private high school, on a scholarship. He was too small to excel at American football, but  his coach described him as “one of the best pass receivers I had in 16 years as a coach”.

In speaking about his early university years, Biden admits to having been a mediocre student, but says he became more assiduous after meeting Neilia.

He has also said that like so many others of his generation, he had been encouraged to think about a political career from John F Kennedy’s 1961 inauguration speech: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden share a laugh as the US Senior Men’s National Team and Brazil play during a pre-Olympic exhibition basketball game at the Verizon Center on July 16, 2012 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

In the Senate, he was a member (and chair for some years) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which, among other things, supported passage of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act. It also advocated strategic arms limitation agreements with the then Soviet Union, encouraged efforts towards peace and stability in the Balkans and opposed the First Gulf War.

Later, Biden urged US action to help end the Darfur genocide and criticised George W Bush’s handling of the Iraq War, including  the US troop surge of 2007.

During his Senate career, he was an advocate of tougher crime legislation. The failure of Robert Bork’s 1987 nomination by Ronald Reagan to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court was a result of Biden’s tough questioning as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Seven years later, Biden sponsored the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act to add 100,000 police officers in police departments across the nation and to increase sentences for a wide range of crimes. His 1991 questioning of Anita Hill, however, during her testimony against the nomination of Clarence Thomas, was sharply criticised for its tone and aggressiveness for decades afterwards.

Biden has acknowledged he failed a class in law school because he did not include the proper citation of a law review article in his written course work. In 1987 he borrowed part of a Neil Kinnock speech to use as his own, which contributed to the collapse of his first attempt to contest the presidency.

After dropping out of the race for the Democratic Party nomination for the 1988 election, Biden learnt he had two brain aneurysms. Complications from surgery meant he had to take an extended break from his Senate activities, and after his convalescence he had to undergo lung surgery.

In 2007, he made a second try for his party’s nomination, but gave up after gaining less than a percentage point of the vote in the Iowa caucus, in the face of strong efforts by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Once the Illinois senator had secured the nomination, Obama asked Biden to be his running mate in 2008. Observers believe Biden, with his working-class background, helped the ticket with important blue collar voters in the swing states of Ohio and

Pennsylvania.

As vice-president, Biden was a behind-the-scenes adviser to Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan and he used his Senate ties to help gain passage for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the US and the Russian Federation.

After the 2008 electoral victory, Biden said: “This is an historic moment. I started my career fighting for civil rights, and to be a part of what is both a moment in American history where the best people, the best ideas, the — how can I say it? — the single best reflection of the American people can be called upon, to be at that moment, with a guy who has such incredible talent and who is also a breakthrough figure in multiple ways — I genuinely find that exciting. It’s a new America. It’s the reflection of a new America.”