Don’t underestimate Biden’s will or vision

He knows what we need and how to get it done

For policy wonks like me, the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign offers a smorgasbord of interesting ideas. But as a four-time White House appointee, I know it will take more than a pile of plans to achieve progress. We need a leader who can make those plans a reality, a president who can heal the gaping wounds Donald Trump has left in our country. For me, that candidate is my former boss, Joe Biden.

Biden is the complete opposite of Trump. Decent. Loyal. Compassionate. The stories of him consoling those who have lost friends or relatives, reaching out to children who stutter (as he did as a boy) or taking time at the White House to be kind to someone feeling down, are too numerous to count.

Even critics acknowledge these qualities in Biden but say this is an oldfashioned kind of politics: out of sync with the era of social media and Twitter snark. I disagree. There has never been a time when the sort of decency that oozes out of Joe Biden is more needed. It’s the salve that can start to reverse the savagery of the Trump era.

Biden’s human qualities make him a better leader and politician. In February of 2009, a few weeks into Barack Obama’s presidency, the administration’s key economic recovery package was in trouble. The country was hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of jobs a month, and the president was pressing for emergency legislation to prevent a second Great Depression.

Republican leaders opposed Obama’s plan and vowed to defeat it. Every single Republican in the House voted no. The plan came to the Senate, where the White House needed three Republicans to vote yes — or else it would die, delivering a body blow to the economy and to Obama’s new presidency.

Joe Biden was the person who got those three “yes” votes and got the bill passed. As a result, America reversed its downward spiral and made huge investments in clean energy, new roads, electric cars, tax relief for working class families, and expanded food stamps to help the needy. The president put Biden in charge of what was the largest domestic program since the New Deal, and he hit every target for getting the aid out quickly and without waste.

The former vice president also knows how to deliver change against implacable opposition. He played a key role in passing the Affordable Care Act (which he memorably called a “BFD”), helping hold Democrats together and defend them against GOP attacks. He took on and beat the NRA twice in shepherding the Brady Bill and the assault weapons ban to passage.

And make no mistake: Biden’s soft heart is matched with an iron will when needed. Unlike Trump’s groveling to dictators, Biden went to the Balkans and called dictator Slobodan Milosevic a “war criminal” to his face. He confronted Russian leader Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. He would repair relations with our allies and restore the dignity of the presidency on a global stage.

Critics have suggested that Biden wants a “throwback” presidency. But his campaign is not about a restoration of a time gone by, but rather a realization of an American promise not yet achieved. He is exactly what we need in a time of powerful forces trying to arrest social and economic progress. And when he set forth his vision for rewarding work in our country Monday in Pittsburgh, he was talking about building the kind of economy we need for our future: where everyone has access to good jobs and their work is rewarded.

Biden has made mistakes, and he’ll have to explain them. If he’s the Democratic nominee, Trump and his hate machine will throw everything they have at him. It’s going to be brutal.

But after suffering the death of a young daughter and his wife in a car crash in 1972, his own near death from two aneurysms in 1988 and the tragic loss of his oldest son in 2015, Biden remains the most optimistic person I have ever met. Even in these dark times, in what he calls the “battle for the soul of America,” he is willing to take the heat to try to win that fight, because he believes our country’s best days are ahead, not behind. I’m proud to be on his side.

Ron Klain was chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden from 2009 to 2011, after serving as a Senate aide to Biden.