‘Champ, you get back up’
GRIEF: JOE EMBRACES THE PAIN OF LOSING HIS WIFE, DAUGHTER AND SON
He was derided as too entrenched in Washington, too hesitant to campaign during Covid-19, and too old, but Joe Biden outmanoeuvered doubters to become the 46th US president on Wednesday, inheriting a multi-tiered nightmare that will take shrewd political skill to overcome.
With his twice-impeached predecessor Donald Trump leaving in disgrace after his supporters launched a deadly riot at the US Capitol, Biden faces vast immediate challenges.
The heart-on-his-sleeve compassion that he shows for everyday Americans may help soothe a nation in distress.
But instead of easily riding to Americans’ rescue he will face the almost unprecedented task of leading the fight against a ferocious pandemic, repairing a sinking economy and uniting a deeply divided citizenry.
“We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal,” Biden, 78, said in his inaugural address at the Capitol, on the very platform where rioters clashed with police two weeks ago before they laid siege to Congress.
“We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.”
Biden, eight years the vice-president to Barack Obama, has endured unspeakable personal tragedy.
He hit the national stage at just 29, with a surprise US Senate win in Delaware in 1972.
One month later tragedy struck: his wife, Neilia, and their one-year-old daughter Naomi were killed in a car crash as they were Christmas shopping.
Biden’s two sons were severely injured but survived, only for the eldest, Beau, to succumb to cancer in 2015.
Throughout his life, Biden has spoken poignantly of his personal tragedy, seen as having nourished a capacity for genuine empathy – something Trump failed to demonstrate even as the nationwide death toll from Covid-19 reached hundreds of thousands.
Biden’s retail politicking skills are peerless: he can flash his million-watt smile at college students, commiserate with unemployed Rust Belt machinists, or deliver a fiery admonishment of rivals.
That personable, gregarious quality was curtailed by the pandemic, which brought in-person campaigning to a halt in March and prompted a more cautious Biden on the trail.
Somewhat diminished from the figure he presented during his vice-presidency, Biden’s dazzling smile remained. But his gait was more delicate and his fine white hair had thinned.
But mostly Biden shrugged it all off.
America’s oldest president relays the heart-wrenching details of his family stories so often that, despite his obvious grief, they have become part of a political brand.
The 1972 accident left his sons Beau, then four, and Hunter, two, badly injured, and the 30-year-old Biden was sworn in beside their hospital beds.
He met his second wife, teacher Jill Jacobs, in 1975 and they
married two years later. They have a daughter, Ashley.
Of the boys, Beau followed his father into politics, becoming attorney-general of Delaware. But the Democratic rising star died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46.
Lawyer Hunter Biden has had a different trajectory. He received a lucrative salary serving on the board of a Ukrainian gas company accused of corruption while his father was vice-president. But the accusations did not stick with voters.
Biden often quotes his father, a car salesman: “My dad always said, ‘Champ, when you get knocked down, you get back up.’”
He touts his working-class roots and recalls being hampered as a child by a stutter so bad he was cruelly nicknamed “Dash”.
But he overcame the condition, and on the campaign trail spoke about how he still counsels youngsters who stutter.
Biden would often point to Jill, 69, as a powerful asset for his campaign, and recalled how she took over as mother to her husband’s two boys.
“She put us back together,” Biden has said.
“It never goes away,” Biden said of the pain that lives within him since losing Beau. The tragedy prevented him from launching a presidential bid in 2016.
Even today, he often stops to greet firefighters, recalling that it was they who saved his boys.
They saved Biden too. In 1988 firefighters rushed him to hospital after an aneurysm.
Nearly every Sunday Biden prays at St Joseph on the Brandywine, a Catholic church in his affluent Wilmington neighbourhood.
There, in the cemetery, rest his parents, his first wife and daughter – and his son Beau, under a tombstone decorated with small American flags.
Last January, Biden confided about Beau and his undeniable influence: “Every morning I get up... and I think to myself, ‘Is he proud of me?’” –