The blurb on the front cover calls this biography a ‘nuanced portrait’; that Biden, ‘flawed yet resolute... may be suited for his moment in history’. Joseph Robinette Biden was born in 1942, eldest of four Catholic siblings. From his parents, he inherited ‘a hyper-alertness to status’, and places much store on being respected. We are informed he is honest, garrulous and approachable. Born with a stutter, he overcame it through willpower and learned to speak publicly, though his ‘effusiveness has always been accompanied by a prickly side’. Like predecessors G W Bush and Trump, he is a teetotaller.
Biden’s life comprised many improbable turns. Ambition and appetite for politics have driven him. Just out his teens, he told his future wife his goal was to become the president. He married at 24 and won a Senate seat at 30 in 1972. His wife and baby daughter died in a car accident the same year. Two sons, Beau and Hunter, survived their mother. Beau died of cancer in 2015. Hunter was addicted to drugs and alcohol and had dubious business dealings in Ukraine and China. Biden married his second wife Jill, a teacher, in 1977.
As a Senator, Biden made wide alliances but supported right wing causes — deregulation of Wall Street, the Iraq war, a crime bill contributing to mass incarceration and longer jail terms — though he was an advocate for civil rights and opposed the Vietnam War. He ran for president initially in 1987, age 45. During this, he suffered a cranial aneurysm and took seven months to recover. He ran again in 2007 at 65, and dropped out early.
In the 2016 election, Obama regarded Hillary Clinton as his natural successor, which put paid to Biden’s hopes. For three years, Biden reverted to private life before his third and now successful presidential race.
As Obama’s loyal two-term vice-president, Obama looked to him for foreign contacts and compromises in Congress. Vaunted for diplomatic expertise, Biden was a Cold Warrior, concentrating on East Europe, NATO and the Middle East, to resist the coercion of Russia and China. He propped up corrupt oligarch President Poroshenko in Ukraine, supported the illegal bombing of Serbia and the illegal Iraq war, and backed Iraqi Premier Malaki who sponsored the sectarianism that undermined unity. Therefore, when Osnos claims that Biden is skeptical about use of force and advocates restraint, he is scarcely credible.
Careful centrism
In 2020, Trumpism was flowering on the right and youth mobilising on the left. Liberals were dismayed that in the most diverse field in election history, a white man and the oldest ever was elected president. The median voter’s age is 38, the Senate’s 65, the Senate Majority leader 78, the House Speaker 80. Biden counted on a swing from Trump towards consensus, experience and incrementalism, going from the edge of oblivion in primaries to victory first among Democrats and then over Trump. He won because of moderates’ and Wall Street’s fear of Sanders, hatred of Trump, Covid that caused 3,000 deaths a day by mid-December, unemployment, and racism just below the surface.
His ‘careful centrism’ was accused simultaneously of being socialist and neoliberal. Tensions among Democrats are between liberals and leftists, generations and ideologues. Kamala Harris was never the progressives’ favourite and nor was Biden.
Biden’s strength is reaching out to people — a touchy-feely propensity that once got him into trouble with eight women exposed to unsolicited advances.
Biden’s plans are to double the minimum wage, make it easier to form unions, adopt climate change to create jobs and reduce energy costs. He hopes to attract disaffected Republicans and unite Democrats. He is under pressure to establish a Covid-19 commission to investigate Trump’s management of the pandemic and last March’s stimulus package of $ 2.2 trillion. This would challenge Biden’s skills at bipartisanship as will Medicare for all, free college education, compulsory voting, more public housing and police reform. The book contains assumptions that Obamaism, with its many deficiencies, will loom large in Biden’s regime, although Biden and Obama were an odd couple, with ‘Biden’s ungovernable mouth and Obama’s weakness for condescension.’
This book was rushed out to take advantage of the wide interest in Biden as president, but its narrative ends before the testy Trump-Biden TV debates and the election itself.
Therefore, it anticipates Biden’s presidency without Trump’s insistence on a rigged election and other manifold challenges to Biden’s White House.
There is no word on China and trade issues. Osnos’ banal conclusion is that Biden’s presidency will be marked by his view of unity and responsibility, and his overcoming of personal misfortunes. In fact, it will prove far more challenging than that.