Tim Stanley
Joe Biden’s inauguration evoked his personality and philosophy, his long march to the presidency and his conviction that he – perhaps he alone – can end America’s “uncivil war”. His Catholic faith, though never referenced directly, was inescapable. He was sworn in on the family Bible, he referred to St Augustine in his speech, and he crossed himself as the invocation was read by Father Leo O’donovan SJ, the priest who presided over the funeral of his son, Beau, in 2015.
It was Beau’s death that deterred his father from running when Barack Obama’s presidency came to an end. It was a decision made in grief. It might also have made victory at a later date, on his third run for the presidency, a bit more likely.
Biden was first elected to the senate from Delaware in 1972. He was just 29 years old. A few weeks later, his wife, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident.
Biden considered pulling out of politics but was persuaded to persevere, rising through the ranks to head the powerful judiciary committee. When he first ran for the presidency in 1987 he was a man of energy. But his campaign lasted little more than four months. He was accused of plagiarising a speech by Neil Kinnock, of exaggerating his academic record and role in the civil rights movement. The popular impression took hold that he was a windbag, liable to tell the audience whatever it wanted to hear.
These qualities are inseparable from a brand of liberalism that bends with the times. He is a man of the centreleft, but has also been anti-crime, an ally of the credit card companies and was considered a war hawk by 2008, when he took his second shot at the White House – and was undermined, yet again, by his big mouth.
Biden caused uproar when he said Barack Obama was “the first mainstream African-american who is articulate and bright and clean”. Yet Obama astutely saw him as a man of experience, particularly in foreign policy, who could reach working-class voters – so he put him on his ticket.
As vice-president, Biden’s ideology evolved again: he had voted effectively to outlaw same-sex marriage in 1996, yet in 2012 told a TV audience that he now supported it, a decision that helped nudge Obama into taking the same position a few days later. It was one of the most significant things that a Vice-president has ever done.
Biden was well-placed to run in 2016 but the pain of Beau’s death from brain cancer ruled it out. If he had run, chances are he would have lost to Donald Trump. After four years of Trump’s anarchic presidency, however, experience and civility were back in fashion, and undoubtedly helped Biden triumph.
He had a choice: he could say “the country is divided, I’ll lead from the Left” or he could say “the country is divided, I’ll unite it.” He took the second path, as American liberals generally do, and doubled down on unity in his Sunday school inaugural, pledging to put “my whole soul” into bringing people back together. Biden is gambling on his personal ability to reach across the aisle to get things done, as he often did in the Senate.
Watching him from a distance, with his arms folded against the cold was Bernie Sanders, his socialist opponent in the primaries – obviously thinking: “That’s what Obama tried to do, Joe. It didn’t work for him, and it won’t work for you.”