Beau the brave
Bam, pols of both parties offer praise & prayers
PRESIDENT OBAMA visited Vice President Biden on Sunday to offer condolences for the death of his 46-year-old son, Beau.
The President was accompanied by his wife, Michelle, on the somber visit to the U.S. Naval Observatory, the official residence of the vice president.
The Obamas had been scheduled to host a reception at the White House, but it was canceled in light of Beau Biden’s death of brain cancer.
Politicians from both sides of the aisle expressed their sympathies for the veteran of the Iraq War who served eight years as Delaware’s attorney general.
Secretary of State Kerry called him “a son any father might hope to raise.”
Kerry, who served in the Vietnam War, noted that Beau chose to continue a year’s stint in the National Guard in Iraq rather than be appointed to the Senate seat his father left to become vice president in 2009.
Kerry said he’d never forget what the elder Biden said about his beloved son at the time.
“Beau is just so good,” Joe Biden said. “He’s so good.”
Kerry cited the younger Biden’s devotion to his country.
“He was filled with a sense of honor, duty and humility — to the core,” Kerry said. “The tragic loss of the good, the young and the brave has haunted me for a long, long time now — and again today, with Beau’s passing.”
Bill and Hillary Clinton offered condolences on Twitter.
“We pray for the strength of his wonderful family,” Bill Clinton tweeted.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and potential Republican presidential nominees Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee also offered words of comfort.
Beau Biden had planned to run for governor of Delaware next year.
He suffered a mild stroke in 2010 and underwent surgery at a Texas cancer center to remove a lesion from his brain three years later.
He was only 3 when he and his brother survived a 1972 car crash that killed their mother and sister — just weeks after Joe Biden was elected to the Senate.