What you see is what you get
WASHINGTON
— In writing the biography of Joe
Biden a decade ago, I spent much time in
Delaware asking locals across the state what they thought of him. I often raised his propensity for committing what were known as political gaffes in talking so much.
The usual response, from admirers and critics alike, was the same: “That’s Joe.” That is, Joe Biden was who he was: an open book who said what he thought when he thought it, letting the chips fall where they might.
The retort mostly came with a mixture of amusement and understanding, that the state’s senior senator said what was on his mind, and the listener generally was willing to take him at his word, warts and all. Furthermore, the attitude was mostly bipartisan, giving Biden a kind of political insulation, a string of six straight six-year terms in the Senate and two key committee chairmanships, Judiciary and then Foreign Relations.
Now, after eight more years as vice president under President Barack Obama and as president-elect, Biden continues to sell himself as straight-arrow Joe who can be counted on to bring the country back to a semblance of normalcy after the nightmare of Donald Trump. In all his years in the Senate and continuing to today, Joe Biden has thrived and survived politically and personally by being himself. At every turn, he pointedly has told his fellow Delawareans, and now the nation, that he gives them “my word as a Biden,” meaning they can take it to the bank.
The line usually gets a chuckle from the locals who have heard it for years, to the point that Obama himself once cashed in on it. When Joe’s elder son, Beau, died of brain cancer in 2015, then-President Obama said in his eulogy about himself and his own family: “We’ve become part of the Biden clan. We’re honorary members now. And the Biden family rule applies. We’re always here for you. We always will be — my word as a Biden.”
The solemn church congregation, with many brushing tears away, laughed at the familiar reference, as Barack Obama and Joe Biden embraced at Beau’s flag-draped coffin. When Obama’s new memoir recently came out, much was made of its lack of comment on the so-called bromance between them. But nobody who had witnessed that scene could have any doubt of its existence.
Obama concluded then: “Joe, you are my brother. And I’m grateful every day that you’ve got such a big heart, and a big soul, and those broad shoulders. I couldn’t admire you more.”
When his old running mate declared for the presidency, Obama did not immediately endorse him. Instead, in keeping with tradition as a former president not to play favorites in the Democratic primary competition, he held off until it was clear Biden would be the nominee. Now Obama is squarely behind him, although the president-elect has chosen to have it known his presidency will not be the equivalent of a third Obama term.
Rather, Biden has talked more of following the path of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 combatting the Great Depression that he inherited, and in overcoming the huge public-health pandemic bungled by Trump, by hiring experts in governance as FDR did then.
In all this, the president-elect has been given the country his “word as a Biden” that he will live up to his reputation as “Middle Class Joe,” by keeping the needs of working-class Americans in the forefront of his administration.
On the heels of the Trump amateur hour, Biden’s promise to rely on experienced hands on the tiller should give him a tailwind of expectation that the ship of state will return to its normal course January 20. ■ Jules Witcover’s latest book is “The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books.