American dreamer
Broadcaster on why one-time underdog is close to victory
In the former mill t ow n of Manchester, New Hampshire, the weather was gloomy.
Almost as gloomy, it seemed, as Joe Biden’s chances of realising his dream to become president.
The state was poised to pick fellow Democrat Bernie Sanders as its presidential candidate, with fresh- faced Pete Buttigieg in second place.
Veteran BBC journalist Jim Naughtie has been covering US politics for five decades and in February he watched as 77- yearold Biden eventually limped home in fifth place. “It was clear he was sinking in the New Hampshire contest to become the Democratic nominee,” says Naughtie. “The Bernie Sanders forces had outgunned him.
“I went to a firefighters’ union meeting, and Biden was going to drop by. It wasn’t going to be a big meet- andgreet session – all that was expected was he’d turn up, shake a few hands then head on his bus to South Carolina where he was expected to do better. The omens for Biden at that point were not good, yet he turned up smiling, looking svelte in sunglasses and a leather jacket, and held an impromptu and unmoderated press conference.
“It was absolutely fascinating because he was fighting for his life, wondering how to turn things around. But it was also clear that here was an old pro at work.
“‘I cannot wait to debate Donald Trump. I cannot wait!’ he said, and he believed it.
“Someone mentioned one of the other challengers, Pete Buttigieg. Eyes alight, Biden said, ‘ Listen, he’s a bright kid. Is he going to be President of the United States? Come off it!’. There was a wonderful sense that here was the old campaigner who’s been doing this for 50 years.”
The irrepressible Joe Biden was eventually chosen – with the help of Southern states – as the party’s presidential candidate, and now stands at the cusp of a stunning victory. His journey to the threshold of the Oval Office has taken five decades.
In 2016, Donald Trump pulled off a triumph of his own thanks to support in places such as Pennsylvania, a former industrial state where the white workingclass population felt abandoned by traditional politics. Although voters here, scarred by years of economic hardship, may not fully agree with Biden, he does have an advantage that could be key to winning the election on November 4. “His whole being is rooted in those northeastern former industrial states,” explains Naughtie. “Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin – they know him. He can talk to them. He speaks their language.
“When he became a senator, he would go home every night on the Amtrak train and he became the guy people knew on the train who would travel economy class, not club class. That’s a big deal. He’s always had this role of being the regular guy. He’s from a working-class, industrialised background. And he’s well known in part of the country that may well decide matters.”
This presidential campaign is especially atypical, according to Naughtie, as it seems like a reversal of the usual presidential race. “If you look at the way this race has unfolded – the noise, the language, the grammar – Trump appears to be the challenger,” he says. “Trump is asking, what about Hunter Biden [ Joe’s son who has been the subject of allegations over drug and alcohol addiction]? What about China? What about Obamacare?
“Biden is sort of sitting there saying, ‘Oh come off it’ and, instead, is talking about what he’ll do with jobs in the first few years of his presidency.
“Trump seems to be running against himself in a way. He’s the one being angry. Usually it’s the challenger who’s angry.
“What Biden is doing is asking where civility, decency and calmness is. He’s saying that you may not agree with me but we’ll argue about that later, and that what people want is to stop this madness.”
Naughtie suspects Biden, should he win, will try to bring a kind of serenity to the post-trump Oval Office. “At home, it will all be about calm,” adds Naughtie. “Reassuring people about Medicare, Obamacare, huge decisions about whether to increase the number of seats of the Supreme Court. But you can’t really have calm in the Oval Office because stuff happens.
“He’ll have a honeymoon period, but if he wins there will be an enormous explosion of anger on the white nationalist right, at the extreme end of the spectrum – the Proud Boys, for example. That will be a huge test. But Biden is confident America doesn’t want that. He believes that if these guys go over the top he will have the country behind him.”
Other western democracies will also be likely to rally to Biden’s cause after four years of Trump’s erratic foreign policy, and his praise of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
“His priorities will be resumption of normal service,” explains Naughtie. “His first instinct will be to say the US is back in business – with Nato, with the Paris Climate Agreement, with the Iran Nuclear deal. And he would have a queue of foreign leaders, except Mr Putin, perhaps, outside the Oval Office saying they’re very much looking forward to working with President Biden.”
A guy who frankly says what he actually feels about something? It’s hard not to find it appealing – Biographer Evan Osnos
There are 10 days until the most important US presidential election in living memory and Joe Biden is the firm favourite.
Polls have him well ahead although, analysts insist, pivotal states capable of swinging the election look closer.
Yet, when asked, more than half of Biden supporters say they’re voting for him because of who he isn’t: Donald Trump.
Despite being the former vice-president, and seemingly weeks away from the most powerful job in the world, who Biden really is remains unknown to many voters, according to his biographer. “There are Americans who are still at this late point in the campaign just tuning in and beginning to really think hard about who Joe Biden is beyond the fact he is the anti-trump,” says political writer Evan Osnos.
“There are definitely Americans who look at him and ask if he has the energy and drive to tackle the crises we’re dealing with. Does he have the ability to understand the demands of a younger generation?”
Osno’s biography, Joe Biden: American Dreamer, explores the 77-year-old former senator’s life and half-century-long career in US politics. “Biden and Donald Trump are opposites in a lot of ways, but where they are especially different is that Trump ran for president and won partly by demonising the nature of government itself by saying that it is an impediment to your prosperity and freedom.
“Whereas Joe Biden says to people, ‘No, I believe there is possibility and dignity in public service and in government and that, if we do this right, we can actually make your lives better, not worse.”
Biden’s life has been marked by personal tragedy and this has made him an empathetic figure. In 1972, a truck ploughed into a car with Biden’s family inside. His wife Neilia and one-year-old daughter Naomi were killed.
Then, in 2015, his son Beau, a rising political star and Iraq war veteran, died from a brain tumour.
“And Biden comes to this with a huge number of scars on his spirit. This is a guy who has been through hell,” says Osnos. “But these are the elements which make him a stronger politician, not a weaker one.
“He’s been through so much in his life. It has relieved him of some of that somewhat solemn self-regard and he’s willing to listen more than he would have done 30 or 40 years ago.”
One thing Biden does have a reputation for is gaffes. But this isn’t necessarily a negative. “He’s almost incapable of doing the usual Washington spindoctoring,” says Osnos. “He sometimes just says what occurs to him. There was an event at the White House about trying to curb domestic violence, and he departed from his text and said, ‘You know where I grew up, if a man raised his fist to a woman, we would knock the hell out of them. Excuse my language’.
“And it was one of those moments where it’s kind of hard not to find that appealing. A guy who frankly says how he actually feels about something.”
However, Osnos says there is often a canny political operator behind these gaffes. One of Biden’s strengths is understanding the mood of the American public.
It is reflected in his political career. Initially he was opposed to bussing black students to segregated white schools. After changing his position, he now has strong support among the black community.
Choosing Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential running mate strengthens his hand as a progressive candidate, according to Osnos. “In many ways he became a face of this more progressive modern American government led by Barack Obama.
“Joe Biden believes it’s part of his self-narrative that he is somebody who advances the cause of racial justice. He really takes pride in having helped the first black president in Barack Obama. And so he sees almost an inevitable next step in his life story as being somebody who can try to help us get over the pain and injustice we’re dealing with.
“Choosing Kamala Harris to be his running mate is important. She would be the first black vice-president, the first woman vice-president, and the first Indian American vice-president. He is gesturing in some pretty dramatic ways that he believes the future is a multi-ethnic democracy.”