[ad_1]
Joe Biden, the next president of the United States, has had a very rich life: full of very good and very bad things that have profoundly marked and influenced his career, which reached its peak last week (on the third attempt). The anecdotes and stories of Biden’s life have been told a lot over the years and even more so in recent months when he became the Democratic presidential candidate, then the front-runner in last week’s election, and finally the future 46th president of the United States. But there are probably still some stories you’re missing, between the ones we prepare for his 70th birthday and the ones we add later.
1. Biden has never lost an election for institutional office (so if we exclude the bipartisan primaries he had participated in prior to 2020). He was elected to the United States Senate at the age of thirty in 1973, the minimum age to be a senator, becoming the sixth-youngest senator in American history and winning a historically Republican-held seat. He was reelected six consecutive times. When he left his seat in 2009, he became the youngest senator to reach seven consecutive terms. He was then nominated twice for vice president, in 2008 and 2012, and for president in 2020 – and he won all three times.
Joe Biden shortly after he was elected senator in December 1972 (AP Photo / Henry Griffin)
2. Biden stuttered. He stuttered throughout his childhood and into his twenties. But let’s take the story from another side. On September 5, 1994, an American student named Branden Brooks attended a public meeting with Biden in Delaware. He raised his hand, spoke up, asked his question, stammering a lot. At the end of the meeting Biden went to find him and took him aside: he told him that he stuttered too, as a child, but that he had never allowed this problem to interfere with his dreams and that is why he was always looking for opportunities to speak in public. , to force yourself to overcome your shame and your problem. A week later, Branden Brooks received a letter from Biden, written the day after their meeting. In the letter, published a few years ago by Note cards, Biden wrote:
Caro Branden –
It was nice meeting you yesterday. You are a good and bright boy, if you keep working hard you have a great future ahead of you. Consider what I told you about stuttering. You can defeat her like I defeated her. When you do, you will be a stronger person: you will have won. Another thing: whenever you are tempted to tease someone because of your problem, remember how you feel when you are teased. Treat everyone with respect and you will be respected.
Your friend
Joe biden
Branden took Joe Biden’s advice: He ran for the office of student representative, was elected and re-elected every year, in high school and college. He took every possible opportunity to speak in public. Today he is a prosecutor in Delaware.
3. Biden studied law at Syracuse, but said that studying law seemed “the most boring thing in the world,” and in his freshman year he was accused of copying a third of an essay he had written for an exam. Biden said that he had quoted a passage from another text but had forgotten to point it out and was allowed to retake the test. The detail is significant from what you will read in point 9.
Four. His first Senate nomination is a great story. In 1972, Caleb Boggs, a longtime Republican senator, wanted to retire, but President Nixon convinced him to reapply. No Democrat challenged him: everyone was sure to lose. Except for Biden, who stepped up at 29 with just two years behind him as a local representative in his county. He applied for practically no money. The electoral campaign was directed by his sister Valerie and his main collaborators were his family. In the summer, polls showed him behind by 30 points. He eventually won by 1.3 percentage points, according to many thanks to his charisma, his countless organized initiatives around Delaware, and his ability to attract the votes of young people.
Joe Biden with then-President Jimmy Carter in 1978 (AP Photo / Barry Thumma)
5. A few weeks after his election to the Senate, Biden’s family was in a serious car accident on December 18, 1972. His wife and one of his daughters, who was one year old, died. His other two sons, Beau and Hunter, were seriously injured. Biden’s life changed radically, as did a part of his personality. He thought about giving up his seat before he was sworn in, he questioned the Catholic faith. Eventually, his colleagues convinced him to stay and he was sworn in at the hospital.
Unlike his colleagues, who spent the week in Washington and returned home for the weekend, Biden began to return to Delaware with his children every night. Senate employees had been instructed to interrupt him even during Senate work in case of phone calls from his children. His constant train travels made him a great supporter of the construction of new railway lines. For a long time, he hosted a barbecue every year for employees of Amtrak, the company that runs the interstate railroads in the United States. In 2011, the Wilmington station, which Biden departed from and where he arrived every day, was named after its 7,000th trip. On December 18 of each year Joe Biden does not work, in memory of his wife and daughter.
6. His son Beau had a law degree, had served in the military in Iraq, was the highly regarded Delaware attorney general, and many expected him to get involved in politics at some point. He died in 2015 of a brain tumor. This is Obama’s speech at his funeral.
7. In 1975, Biden went on a blind date arranged by his brother and met Jill Tracy Jacobs, a teacher. They started dating and liking each other, but Biden had to propose five times before getting a yes. They were married two years later, in 1977. They have a daughter, Ashley, born in 1981. Jill Biden has never stopped working and continues to teach every day in Virginia. It was the first second lady to continue exercising her profession while her husband is in office.
Joe and Jill Biden in 2008 (AP Photo / Mark Hirsch)
8. In February 1988, Biden was rushed to the hospital due to an aneurysm. The situation was serious to the point that a priest gave him the last rites. He recovered somewhat, but then had a pulmonary embolism and a second aneurysm. He stayed in the hospital for seven months.
9. Biden first ran for president in 1988. He was considered one of the favorite candidates, due to his charisma, his fast political career and his notoriety, also caused by the sad family affair of 1972. However, it was discovered that he had copied a speech by then British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. It turned out that similar things had happened in the past with a college exam and the speeches of Bob Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, and Hubert Humphrey – these incidents shattered his campaign. He ran again in 2008, without going very far: but then Obama chose him as his alternate.
Joe Biden’s first presidential campaign
10. He is a Catholic and will be the second Catholic in the White House after John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
eleven. He made a cameo in an episode of the television series. Parks and Recreation.
12. Although Biden has long been considered one of the most competent and experienced American senators, especially in foreign policy, his great ease of expression has been unanimously judged as his greatest asset and his greatest flaw. The downside is represented by ramshackle and improvised statements that more than once created trouble and embarrassment for him and his allies.
Obama, however, had highly praised his role in the administration’s decision-making process: “The best thing about Joe is that he questions what he hears in meetings and thus forces those involved to think carefully about what he says, defend his ideas using solid arguments and look at things from another point of view. ”According to many, among other things, it was thanks to Biden’s verbal exuberance that Obama came out in favor of same-sex marriage before the elections of 2012. Biden said he was in favor during an interview, surprisingly, forcing the president’s hand and thus forcing him to take a position.
13. Although his political career has always been associated with Delaware, he was born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the state that led him to victory in the presidential election.
Joe Biden in front of his childhood home in Scranton during the presidential election campaign. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
14. When he met the mother of his first wife, Nelia Biden, she asked him what he wanted to do in life. The president of the United States, said Biden.
fifteen. In 1993, while on a diplomatic mission in the Balkans, he met on a semi-private basis with Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. Biden claimed to have called him a “cursed war criminal,” but some attendees recall that he was a bit more diplomatic.
Joe Biden during his 1993 diplomatic trip to Bosnia (AP Photo / Michael Stravato, file)
[ad_2]
