Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Most

By Evan Osnos

Scribner, 192 pp.

By Paul Markowitz

Evan Osnos, a National Book Award winner and contributor to The New Yorker, has written a series of biographical sketches about Joe Biden.  This is certainly not a definitive biography of Biden.  It could hardly be, coming in at under two hundred pages.  Yet in a relatively few chapters, honing in on a few key periods in Biden’s life, Osnos has presented us with significant insights into the life of a singular man who has been in national public life for over forty-seven years.

In trying to present the long political life of Biden to a present-day audience, Osnos has succeeded admirably in showing us both his political and personal strengths and weaknesses.  The author has based some of his chronicle of Biden on a series of articles in the New Yorker that he has written over the past twelve years or so, for which he interviewed and spent time with Biden on several occasions.  What we see ultimately in Biden’s life is a mind-bending dichotomy between someone who has experienced events of remarkable luck countered by episodes of horrendous tragedy.  The end result of Osnos’s endeavor is to capture the essence of Biden with all his accomplishments, failures, strengths and frailties.

The book begins with a rarely mentioned episode in Biden’s life, in which shortly after his first run for President in 1988, he suffered a brain aneurysm.  In a strange quirk of fate his losing the race for President at that particular moment, something he has desired for over fifty years now, may have ultimately saved his life. 

We also get a glimpse of Biden endeavoring to deal with the roller coaster ride of this past year starting with the death of and memorial to the civil rights hero and congressman John Lewis, and ending with some 150,000 dead from the coronavirus, and the epochal turn of events that followed the killing of George Floyd.  Biden, unlike the traditional Democratic candidate for President who runs to the left in the primaries and then turns to the center in the general election, reverses the tradition and does just the opposite.  Whether this was a well-thought out plan or just the outcome of a crazy year with the economy in shatters and an extremely unconventional President in office, the trajectory worked for him.

The tumultuous political life of Biden began early, with his successful upset of a well-established Senator from Delaware, only to be followed by the shocking death of his wife and child in a traffic accident just before he was sworn in as senator.  This episode, in which his two surviving sons were gravely injured, led him to strongly consider resigning before being sworn in, only to be talked out of it by Mike Mansfield, the Democratic leader of the Senate.  He took his seat in the Senate with a long-held commitment to commute home daily by train to be with his family.

Biden, who had always been a middling but popular student from a conventional working class background, joined the Senate as a proudly centrist Democrat with liberal views only on civil rights.  Through a series of humbling episodes early in his senatorial career — being mocked for discussing topics he was clearly ignorant of, overstating accomplishments and quoting a British politician without attribution in an early run for the presidency — he learned some difficult but illuminating lessons.

After marrying a model and community college professor, Jill Jacobs, he settled down to a family life, which was of great importance and significance to him.  He then built a very non-progressive record in the Senate by voting for the deregulation of Wall Street, the Defense of Marriage Act, NAFTA, and the war in Iraq.  He further enraged liberals by limiting testimony for Anita Hill in the confirmation of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court.  Having had such a long career in the Senate and having the desire and capability to have friendships with people from differing beliefs and backgrounds, he thought positively of the days when he would negotiate on trying to work out compromises with Republicans and even segregationist Democrats.  This was, for him, a proud accomplishment, but it led to him being looked upon with increasing disfavor by a more PC world.

Biden did not fare well against Barack Obama in another presidential run, abandoning the race early, but he left behind a pleasant relationship with many of his competitors.  This has consistently been a strength of his that compares favorably with another Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.  Giving sound advice to Obama endeared him to the ultimately successful candidate, and because he seemed to know everybody and had good foreign relations experience, Obama quickly tapped him to be his Vice President.

Although at first glance the two men seem radically different in style and background, Biden in retrospect seems culturally and geographically well suited to team with Obama.  Obama soon gave Biden important and sensitive tasks, especially in foreign affairs, an area in which Obama felt inexperienced.  Biden began to luxuriate in his role.  He gave Obama unceasing support and ultimately Obama would declare that choosing Biden was the best thing he did.

Because of Biden’s many years of experience and familiarity with foreign leaders, he was often be very down-to-earth and candid with world leaders, in a way Obama couldn’t be.  This worked well for both of them, although Biden’s relationship with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was often tense.  Gates remarked in his memoirs that he couldn’t remember a time where Biden got it right in foreign affairs.  That harsh assessment may be explained, however, in part by Gates more militaristic approach to foreign policy.

The recurring theme in Biden’s life of alternating highs and lows would return in abundance in 2015 with the death of his beloved son and heir apparent, Beau, from brain cancer.  This latest tragedy would ultimately lead to his dropping out of the 2016 race against Clinton.  This nadir in Biden’s career would be countered some four years later by the startling turnaround in Biden’s fortunes — when, after losing badly in the first two primaries in 2020, he startled everyone by winning the South Carolina primary by a significant amount, leading to most of his primary opponents dropping out.  He would go from near oblivion to victory in barely three days.

Osnos has done an exceptional job of capturing the essence of Biden with all his strengths and weaknesses, from his lengthy and sometimes meandering answers to questions, his inappropriate tactile relationship with female supporters, his working relationships with segregationist senators in the past, his knowledge of foreign relations and many of their leaders, and his general ability to relate to the common working man and woman.

We are ultimately left with a picture of the life of a common man with an uncommon drive for success, with two divergent strains in his biography – “the myths that undergird the politics of responsibility, and his own encounters with misfortune”.  Whatever his strengths might be, he will need them and more if he is ultimately successful as a President during exceedingly challenging times.

Paul Markowitz is a California based writer.