For Joseph R. Biden, Jr. the high-water mark, if not of his career then of his reputation, came on January 12, 2017. It was on that unusually warm Thursday afternoon that President Barack Obama bestowed upon him, in a surprise ceremony only days before the end of their second term, the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“To know Joe Biden,” said the president to a room packed with friends, family and staff, “is to know love without pretense, service without self-regard, and to live life fully.”
Having at last earned the goodwill of the American people thanks to dignity with which he endured the obsequies of his eldest son Beau, Biden was talked out of running for the office which he had long coveted. Obama believed Hillary Clinton was the surer bet in 2016.
And, if Biden had been wise, he might have seen that moment in the East Room of the White House for what it surely was: a capstone moment, the end of a long career that had, let’s face it, not been marked by too much distinction.
But a mere two years later, ol’ Joe was back on the hustings. Yet the story that the tragic events that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017 moved him to run for the presidency for a fourth time was transparently ridiculous—absurd even by Biden’s standards. And cannier politicians than he understood that his entry into the 2020 race was likely a mistake—a decision driven by a combination of hubris and the demands of an aggressively, even ravenously, greedy family. That canniest politician of all, his old boss Obama, had his doubts. “Joe,” he told him, “you don’t have to do this.”
But, in the end, the party elders—including Obama (who is said to have persuaded both Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Pete Buttigieg to exit the race on the eve of Super Tuesday), Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) (who handed Biden the South Carolina primary) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (the most powerful House speaker since Sam Rayburn) were persuaded (or acted as though they were) that Charlottesville did indeed touch the better angels of Biden’s nature—that the moment called for Joe Biden.
Yet there were warning signs all along—signs that indicated that Joe, Dr. Jill, and the rest of the clan were not really the answer to Trump (or really to anything).
Recall that upon learning of the affair their son Hunter was conducting with Beau’s widow, Joe and Jill issued a statement that read:
We are all lucky that Hunter and Hallie found each other as they were putting their lives together again after such sadness. They have mine and Jill’s full and complete support and we are happy for them.
A more appropriate reaction to the new intra-family arrangement, made privately, but leaked to the press later on, came from Obama himself, who reportedly described it as “weird sh*t.”
Weirder still was the now infamous Corn Pop speech of June 2017, in which Biden recounted a racially-charged confrontation he had in the early 1960s with a reputed gang member named Corn Pop. The confrontation occurred while Joe was serving as a lifeguard in Wilmington—a job the Washington Post told readers the future president took to “learn more about the black community.”
That Biden’s presidency has been a disaster is only too clear; the main question now, after his halting, dazed performance on the debate stage last week, is whether or not he will find a way to gracefully exit the race.
While it is clear for anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear that he is not fit for office, much less a grueling national campaign, there is reason to believe he will stick it out.
And the most frequently cited reason one hears both publicly and privately is: The Family.
The Family. At first, there were the four Biden siblings—products of a postwar American boom that passed them by. But one of them, our Joey, made it to the big time while the other three—Valerie, Jimmy, and Frank—clung to him like parasites. Joey became their meal ticket, their passport to bigger and better things. The Bidens are emblematic of a particular subclass of postwar ethnic Catholic families forced to straddle, through circumstance or, in their case, bad luck, that razor’s edge separating the American working and middle classes.
Families such as the Bidens are an instantly recognizable type: suspicious, clannish, acquisitive, consumed with appearances, almost comically insecure. Every neighborhood up and down the I-95 corridor has their conniving, striving Joeys and Jimmys and Vals and Franks.
It is by now de rigueur that any account of the life of the 46th president includes the tale of the secretive, spendthrift father, whose career took a wrong turn on the road to prosperity. Joe Sr. almost grasped the brass ring, but it slipped through his fingers.
In 1946, chasing the dream of postwar affluence, the Bidens relocated to Garden City, New York. But, within a short time, they landed back in Scranton. By 1953, the family settled in Clayton, Delaware. The brief interlude in Garden City represents an under-appreciated but significant ‘what if?’ in the life of the president: What might have become of him if Daddy hadn’t been a derelict and the family had managed to plant roots in that bedroom community of nouveau riche lax bros?
Though they couldn’t have known it at the time, Biden Sr.’s misfortune was Biden Jr.’s making. He needed a stage commensurate with his talents, and he found it in Delaware. If the Bidens had remained in Garden City, he might have ended up as a stockbroker or insurance salesman. Maybe even a car dealer like Dad. But President of the United States? Unlikely.
Fate surely then intervened on Joey’s behalf, but has the result been a happy one? Look at Joe and Jill now, up there in the stratosphere, standing alongside the Clintons and the Obamas, amidst the glitz and glamour, among the good and great of Hollywood and the Hamptons—yet they seem, because they are, hopelessly outmatched.
Whatever one thinks of them, it is surely the case that Bill and Hillary and Barack and Michelle were each in their own way blessed with some combination of luck, brains, and charisma. Jill and Joe have none of these (and one suspects they know it.) But goaded on by The Family and dreams of bigger things they remain undeterred—one last dash to the finish line, and then, hopefully, to the big payoff.
A story Trump tells on the stump with some regularity, must—if indeed Biden is aware of it—sting because this one, unlike so many of Trump’s vignettes, has the unmistakable ring of truth to it.
Trump recalls asking his “friend” from Palm Beach, Teddy Kennedy, about who Kennedy thought were the smartest and dumbest members of the Senate. About the smartest, Kennedy,
…gave me a name—I won’t say it, because it was a person I didn’t like very much, so I don’t want to give it….”
I said who’s the dumbest in the Senate?”
Let’s see, probably Joe…”
I said ‘Joe who’?”
Joe Biden.”
The Family has gathered once again. They have circled the wagons, trying to weather the storm. The AP reports that both Jill and Hunter believe,
The president shouldn’t bow out when he’s down, and believe that he can come back from what they see as one subpar performance. The family questioned how he was prepared for the debate by staff and wondered if they could have done something better, the people said.
The mythology Biden and his hagiographers have painstakingly constructed over the years may help him through the current rough patch. Again and again, the public has been regaled with tales of Biden’s reputation for hard work and innate decency—tales that are meant to highlight the supposed contrast with Trump.
With regard to Biden’s work ethic, the Wall Street Journal informed readers last month that,
For much of his career, Biden enjoyed a reputation on Capitol Hill for being a master negotiator of legislative deals, known for his detailed knowledge of issues and insights into the other side’s motivations and needs—and for hitting his stride when the pressure was on.
Winslow Wheeler is a longtime defense expert who was the only Senate staffer to ever work simultaneously on the staffs of a Republican and a Democrat. Wheeler saw Biden in action for years and tells me the above assessment is, “Complete, total, utter horse sh*t. He was known to everyone as a loudmouth. He always came to hearings unprepared and winged it.”
Biden’s reputation for decency may be overdone as well. Speaking from the White House Briefing Room in January 2021, Biden won plaudits for setting out a kind of zero tolerance policy for bad behavior among his staff,
I’m not joking when I say this: If you’re ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot.”
But, then again, Biden himself seems to have a less-than-honorable record as a boss.
A senior administration official told Politico this week that White House staffers “are scared sh*tless of him.” Longtime Clinton advisor James Carville recently told Axios, Biden “Doesn’t have advisers. He has employees.”
And it is a near certainty that at least some of those employees will be scapegoated for his performance on June 27th.
A longtime Democratic operative tells me Biden’s current campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon is not widely seen as “capable” enough to manage a national campaign, while White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients is a “non-factor” among the top echelons of the Biden hierarchy. If there are to be scapegoats for June 27th, those who actually prepared Biden for the debate—longtime aide and Washington PR figure Anita Dunn, her husband Bob Bauer and former Chief of Staff Ron Klain—will probably escape the guillotine. In Biden-world, they have tenure, whereas Dillon does not.
Biden’s debate performance also brought to the fore the deep resentments—long simmering, but always there—within the Democratic Party. It was no coincidence that only minutes after the debate ended, denizens of Obama-world were among the first to suggest Biden step aside. Through tears, former Obama adviser Van Jones said Biden needed to consider dropping out; a noticeably less upset David Axelrod concurred. Meanwhile, the Obama ‘Pod Bros,’ the one-time wunderkinds now approaching middle age, lit into the president and his team.
What to make of all this?
An administration figure I spoke to soon after the debate says the temper tantrums emanating out of Obama-world will have “no impact—zero.” Biden-world realizes, as do many associated with Clinton-world, that Kamala Harris isn’t up to the task—indeed, she might just be the only person who might do worse against Trump come November 5th.
“Who are we going to run,” they asked, “J.B. Pritzker?”
The bench is not deep. Time is running short. The Democratic Party knows it and so too does The Family.
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