Bridge-building but stubborn natural politician who overcame tragedy to reach highest office
IT IS worth pausing for a moment on Joe Biden the man, and his journey to the highest office. Son of a used-car salesman, he was raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a former coal mining and railway town which, though now somewhat revitalised, once epitomised industrial decline.
A mediocre student but a natural politician, he won a seat in the US Senate aged just 29. His 35-year Senate career was defined by pragmatism: stubbornly centrist, he consistently built bridges to Republicans to get things done.
This was his third run for the presidency, after failures in 1988, when he plagiarised Neil Kinnock, and 2008, when he never left the launchpad. And he has suffered more than his share of personal tragedy: his first wife and infant daughter killed in a car crash in 1972, his son, Beau Biden, dying of brain cancer in 2015.
Much is expected of a new president’s first 100 days. Biden intends to start with the pandemic: more masks, more tests, accelerated vaccination programmes, $1,400 (€1,150) stimulus payments to the hard-up. He has also promised to invest in job creation, renew America’s decrepit infrastructure, reverse Trump’s tax cuts for corporations and wealthy Americans, revive Obamacare, rebuild relations with allies, and rejoin the Paris climate change agreement.
But there is a bigger challenge: reuniting a profoundly divided nation; “healing America”.
Moreover, decades of rising inequality, compounded by the disproportionate impact of the 2008 financial crisis on blue collar Americans, have convinced a “left behind” generation the establishment is indifferent to them.
And the Democrats have alienated small-town America, whether through Obama in 2008 describing their inhabitants as “clinging to guns and religion and antipathy to people who aren’t like them”, or Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables”. Trump filled the vacuum, but overpromised and under-delivered: factories and coal mines continued to close. So Biden has an opportunity. But it will be neither quick nor easy, demanding an expensive combination of short-term job creation and long-term investment in the education system.
Racial divisions have also deepened, stoked by a succession of toxic Trump pronouncements. Biden has promised $30bn (€25bn) of investment in businesses in communities of colour, and a justice department focused on civil rights, criminal justice reform and community-based policing. Sensible ideas, but he will need them to bring real change.
The Republican Party also faces a core challenge; a fork in the road. In July 2017, I predicted that the Trump presidency would be chaotic and dysfunctional and could end in disgrace. So it proved.
But Trump is not a man who will now focus on building his presidential library. He will continue to foment anger and resentment and may contemplate a 2024 run. If 17 Republican senators vote with the Democrats on the impeachment charges, they can convict, and also disqualify Trump from future public office. In short, they can reassert traditional Republican values. Or they can defend him and face a future as the voice of the angry white man in an increasingly diverse America. (© Telegraph Media Group Ltd 2021)