Sen. Joe Biden at National Press Club, Aug. 1, 2007. Photo by Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images.
by Naftali Bendavid
His hair has gone snowy white since he first flashed onto the political scene 35 years ago as a boy wonder. He has endured personal tragedy, political scandal and a major health crisis. And he is trailing in the presidential polls by a daunting margin.
But Joe Biden made his case forcefully at the National Press Club Wednesday, expressing only the occasional flash of frustration at his political plight, as when he lashed out at the enormous sums raised by some rivals. “This is obscene, ladies and gentlemen-it’s flat-out obscene,” Biden said. “Let me say it again: It’s obscene.”
The Delaware senator also insisted that no more than 10 percent of Democrats have chosen a candidate yet. “The truth is, no one has made up their mind yet in the Democratic Party,” Biden said. “The truth is, I may not be the nominee-but I may.”The truth also is that this is what you might expect someone trailing so badly to say. But Biden’s credentials, after six terms in the Senate, cannot be dismissed, and his personal history is compelling. Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972 at age 29, making him one of the youngest senators in U.S. history. He made a splash, becoming known as the boy orator of the Democratic Party, and in 1988 he jumped into the presidential race. But his campaign was torpedoed by a plagiarism scandal when he failed to attribute rhetoric in a speech to a British Labor politician.
Biden also has also been shadowed by family tragedy. His first wife and a daughter were killed in a car accident; he later remarried. In 1988, Biden was hospitalized with brain aneurysms, and though he was warned he might not survive, he recovered fully.
Along the way, Biden has earned a reputation in some quarters as a man in love with the sound of his own voice. Yet his intelligence in his areas of expertise, foreign affairs and legal policy, is hard to dispute. Biden’s partition plan for Iraq, formulated with scholar Leslie Gelb, has attracted significant notice. And now, later in his life and career, Biden is slogging through another presidential race as a distant long-shot, eclipsed by the star power of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, adopting an outspoken, colorful campaign persona that seems to reflect his having little to lose.
Some of that tone was on display Tuesday. Biden, who has visited Iraq seven times, cultivates an image as a foreign policy maven who knows better than to adopt the simplistic solutions of neo-conservative hard-liners or anti-war Democrats. “We continue to careen off the road, hampered by a false choice: more of the same…or withdraw and hope for the best,” Biden said.
The ostensible reason for Biden’s appearance was the publication of his memoir, “Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics.” Most presidential candidates these days feel the need to write books. Biden’s title even echoes that of candidate George W. Bush’s “A Charge to Keep.”
Asked whether Congress could force Bush to change course in Iraq, Biden said the odds were 50-50, depending on when enough Republicans conclude that sticking with the president is too politically risky. “If that comes by November, which is possible, then we have a chance of ending this war in a somewhat responsible way,” Biden said. “If not, it’s beyond the pale.”
He also warned Democrats that they would lose in 2008 if they did not nominate someone with unassailable foreign policy expertise-like, say, himself. “If any Democratic thinks we’ll be able to win the presidency in 2008 without ante-ing up our credentials on national security and terrorism,” Biden said, “they are making a tragic, tragic mistake.”
