Focus on Iraq, ending torture, healthcare, and education
In the first year of my presidency, I will call the Joint Chiefs in to end the war in Iraq. I would in my inaugural address make it clear to the world that we were abandoning the Bush policy with regard to torture and holding prisoners. By picking things
Americans value the most and we can take on interest groups the quickest on, I'd insure every single child in the US and provide catastrophic health insurance for every child. I would implement the preschool education proposal that I have here.
Source: 2007 Des Moines Register Democratic Debate
Dec 13, 2007
Insulted Indian-Americans in attempt to compliment vibrancy
Biden has made several campaign-killing statements since he declared his candidacy in January 2007. In an apparent effort to compliment Americans of Indian descent, "In Delaware, the largest growth in population is
Indian Americans--moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking." His office sought to explain the remarks, saying, 'The point
Senator Biden was making is that there has been a vibrant Indian-American community in Delaware for decades.
It has primarily been made up of engineers, scientists and physicians, but more recently middle-class families are moving into Delaware and purchasing family-run small businesses."
The irony is, Giuliani, probably the most underqualified man since Bush to seek the presidency is talking about any of the people here. There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11. There's nothing else, and I mean this
sincerely. Here's a man who brags about how he made the city safe. It was the Biden crime bill that became the Clinton crime bill that allowed him to do that. They wipe it out. He remains silent. The 9/11 Commission comes along and says the way to keep
your city safe is to do the following things. He's been silent. He's done nothing. Now he's talking about he's going to go in and he will demonstrate to Iran, he's going to in fact lay down the law. This man is truly not qualified to be president.
I'm looking forward to running against Giuliani. With regard to my experience, in 1979 I led a delegation of 19 senators negotiating the START agreement with Brezhnev. I was deeply involved in Bosnia. I introduced the first public financing bill.
Q: Senator Biden, do you believe that MoveOn.org has changed politics for the better?
A: I don't think they've changed politics.
Q: Have they been a positive force in politics?
A: On some things, yes. I mean, look, I don't think you can castigate
them for the ad [saying "Patraeus or Betray Us?"]. But the idea that I was initially told--I'm going to get in trouble for this, but--that the quote, "It's their party"--they're part of the party. It's not their party.
Source: 2007 Democratic primary debate at Dartmouth College
Sep 6, 2007
Prayer gives you strength, but doesn't prevent crises
Q: Do you believe that, through the power of prayer, disasters like Hurricane Katrina could have been prevented?
A: My mom has an expression. She says that, "God sends no cross you're unable to bear."
The time to pray is when you're told, as I was, that my wife and daughter are dead, to have the courage to be able to bear the cross. Pray that God can give you the strength to deal with what everyone is faced with in their life, serious crosses to bear.
The answer to the question is, no, all the prayer in the world will not stop a hurricane.
But prayer will give you the courage to be able to respond to the devastation that's caused in your life and with others to deal with the devastation.
Most decisive moment: engaging in civil rights movement
Q: What's the decisive moment in your life that led you to seek the presidency?
A: I worked in the African-American community, as the only white employee for a long while when I was a kid. And I got involved in the civil rights movement.
The decisive moment in me life that put me on the broader path was the civil rights movement. When I realized that it does make a difference if you're engaged. You actually can change people's lives. You can actually change the state of the nation.
Source: 2007 Democratic primary debate on "This Week"
Aug 19, 2007
Next president has no margin of error, post-Bush
We know how badly this president has ruined this country. We know how terrible we are internationally. I think the next president, when he or she takes office, better understand two things.
One, they're going to be left with virtually no margin of error. And two, they better understand and believe what it's worth losing over if they're going to get anything done. That's the president I'd be.
Source: 2007 AFL-CIO Democratic primary forum
Aug 8, 2007
Politics is a noble calling
The first principles of politics I learned in the 1950s in my grandpop's kitchen when I was about twelve years old. Grandpa wanted me to understand two things:
First, that nobody, no group is above others. Public servants are obliged to level with everybody, whether or not they'll like what he has to say. Second, politics was a matter of personal honor.
A man's word is his bond.
If you do politics the right way, you can actually make people's lives better. And integrity is the minimum ante to get into the game.
Nearly 40 years after I first got involved, I remain captivated by the possibilities of politics and public service. I believe my chosen profession is a noble calling.
My childhood impediment was a stutter. When I was at home with my brothers and sister, hanging with neighborhood friends, or shooting the bull on the ball field, I was fine, but when I got thrown into a new situation or a new school, had to read in
front of the class, or wanted to ask out a girl, I just couldn't do it. My freshman year, because of the stutter, I got an exemption from public speaking. Everybody knew it.
It was like having to stand in the corner with the dunce cap. There were days I wondered: How would I ever bear it?
It's a funny thing to say, but even if I could, I would not wish away the darkest days of the stutter.
That impediment ended up being a godsend for me. Carrying it strengthened me and made me a better person. The very things it taught me turned out to be invaluable lessons for my life as well as my chosen career.
1970: won first election, to County Council, in GOP district
In 1970 I told my wife I thought I'd like to run for New Castle County Council. I explained it was a GOP district, so I probably wouldn't win, but I'd learn a lot, which had to be a good thing for somebody who wanted to make a more serious run later.
I asked my sister, Val, if she'd run the campaign. She was a methodical organizer. She got voter records going back several elections, had an index card for every block in every neighborhood and started recruiting block captains.
I spent most of my time in Democratic precincts, but I also spent time going door to door in the middle-class neighborhoods like the one I grew up in. They were overwhelmingly Republican in 1970, but I knew how to talk to them. I understood they valued
good government & fiscal austerity & the environment. I promised to fight for open space. Those voters were key for me. The 1970 elections were a washout for the Democratic Party in Delaware, but I won election to the County Council by 2,000 votes.
1972: beat GOP incumbent; 2nd youngest Senator ever elected
[My sister] Val had run every campaign I was in, and she would manage my Senate campaign too. The race for Senate was risk-free. Only a handful of people outside the family thought I had a real shot to win, so I figured even if I lost, people were going
to say, "That's a nice young guy." I was confident I could be a solid candidate. And I actually believed I could win.
When the political reporters started to find out how hard I was working to win over voters, none of them called my running for the
Senate ridiculous. I was "one of the bright young men of the Democratic party." I think they liked fresh blood to write about. At the same time, the smart guys covering Delaware politics didn't give me a snowman's chance in August. They'd note my lack of
a war chest, Sen. Boggs's long-standing popularity, his quarter century of serving Delaware, and the slew of Democratic challengers he'd left by the roadside. [In 1972, Biden won by 3,000 votes and became the 2nd youngest senator ever elected.]
1972: Wife & child killed in pre-inauguration auto accident
[Just after Biden's 30th birthday, after his election but before his inauguration into the Senate, he was informed his family had been in a traffic accident.] I kept telling myself that everything was going to be OK, but the minute I got to the hospital
& saw my brother's face, I knew the worst had happened. My three children had been in the car with my wife when the accident happened. Neilia had been killed and so had our baby daughter. The boys were alive.
Washington & the Senate had no hold on me.
I was supposed to be sworn in two weeks, but I could not bear to imagine the scene without Neilia. I told the Senate majority leader, Mike Mansfield, that I wasn't going to be a Senator. Mansfield was relentless. He called the hospital every day to
tell me he needed me in the Senate and to keep me up to date. Mansfield told me I owed it to Neilia to a Senator. My wife had worked too hard for me to kick it away. Give me six months, Joe, Sen. Mansfield kept saying. So I agreed. Six months.
I remember vividly the first time, in 1973, I had to go to the floor to vote on abortion. A fellow Senator asked how I would vote. "My position is that I am personally opposed to abortion, but I don't think I have a right to impose my few on the rest of
society. I've thought a lot about it, and my position probably doesn't please anyone. I think the government should stay out completely. I will not vote to overturn the Court's decision. I will not vote to curtail a woman's right to choose abortion.
But I will also not vote to use federal funds to fund abortion."
I've stuck to my middle-of-the-road position on abortion for more than 30 years. I still vote against partial birth abortion and federal funding, and
I'd like to make it easier for scared young mothers to choose not to have an abortion, but I will also vote against a constitutional amendment that strips a woman of her right to make her own choice.
Remarried in 1977, willing to give up Senate for Jill
I met Jill Jacobs in 1975: I was 32; she was 24. In 1977 I asked her to marry me. Jill said she couldn't give me up. I assured her I'd leave the Senate if she wanted me to.
I'd given her my word. I'd already let a few people know they might want to be
ready to run for the Senate in case I got out. I was going to have to show Jill I meant it, [so I concluded] "I'll tell Bill Frank I'm not running." Frank was the chief political reporters at the Wilmington News-Journal.
I could hear Frank's phone ringing. Then I heard a dial tone. Jill had her finger on the phone cradle. She'd cut off the call. She told me later why: "If I denied you your dream, I would not be marrying the man I fell in love with."
Jill and I were married by a priest at the UN chapel in NYC in 1977. Beau and Hunter stood with us at the altar. The way they thought of it, the four of us were getting married.
1988: Presidential run intended as base-building for 1992
After President Reagan won a second term in 1984, the question of my running was back on the table. It would be a wide-open field in 1988--no incumbent and no heir apparent on the Democratic side. I was pretty sure the most formidable Democrat,
Mario Cuomo, wasn't going to run. And when I took a look at likely candidates--Gary Hart, Richard Gephardt, Jesse Jackson--I felt I measured up. I was just 42, but after a decade on the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee and nearly that long on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I knew the world and America's place in it in a way few politicians did.
If someone had hooked me up to a lie detector in
1988 and asked if I was going to be a fully announced candidate for 1988, I would have said no. If they had asked me if I was building a base to run for president in 1992 or 1996, I would have said, "Absolutely."
1988: plagiarized law school paper, but not malevolently
During the 1988 presidential race, there was a new story bubbling about problems I'd had in law school. Now, in addition to everything else, I had to answer for my screw-up in Legal Methods 22 years earlier.
This was an academic mistake.
I hadn't been trying to cheat. My gurus advised me to just say I did it and ask for forgiveness. I said, "It was an academic mistake. I wasn't trying to hide it. If I was trying to hide it, why would
I cite this article that no one else in the class found? I didn't cheat."
I'd made a stupid mistake 22 years earlier, I told the press. "I was wrong, but I did not intentionally move to mislead anybody. I am in this race to stay.
I am in this race to win." The NY Times headline was "Biden admits plagiarism in School but says it was not 'malevolent.'" [As a result, Biden withdrew from the presidential race.]
After a CT scan and an angiogram, the doctor who explained the results of the tests looked worried. I had an aneurysm lying just below the base of my brain. That is what had knocked me out the night before. I was lucky to be alive.
But if the aneurysm bled again, I probably wouldn't survive.
The size of the worst bulge and the leak meant that a fatal rebleed could be imminent. Surgery to shore up the spot where I'd bled was the best chance I had of survival.
My chances of surviving the surgery were certainly better than 50-50. But the chances of waking up with serious deficits to my mental facilities were more significant. Any incidental damage could leave me seriously impaired.
The most likely incidence
was loss of speech. Dr. George said what he was about to do was going to be difficult, but he had done many of these before. But he recommended I speak to my family--it might be my last chance. [Biden fully recovered from the surgery.]
Religion informs my values; my reason dictates outcomes
Religion informs my values. My reason dictates outcomes. My religion taught me about abuse of power. That's why I moved to write the Violence Against Women Act. That's why I take the position I take on Darfur.
It came about as a consequence of the reasoning that we're able to do it. I don't find anything inconsistent about my deep, religious beliefs and my ability to use reason.
His book "Promises to Keep" written before presidential race
Q: Tell us a little bit about your book, "Promises to Keep," that's coming out.
A: Well, I wrote a book back when I thought I was going to be working with John Kerry in a Kerry administration. It had nothing to do with presidential politics.
I was encouraged to write it by a guy named Richard Ben Cramer, who wrote the book "What it Takes," and asked how my personal values inform my public policy. And I talk about everything from the Supreme Court to the Balkans to Iraq, and how
I think that the most significant thing about what we need in leadership is people who are willing to get back up. My dad used to have an expression. He used to say, "The measure of success is not whether you get knocked down; it's how rapidly you get
back up." And the American people always get back up. And I think what they're doing is looking for somebody who is going to give them the opportunity to be able to take on the tough issues that are out there and just tell them the truth.
Apologized for saying Barack Obama was clean and articulate
Q: You have gotten in trouble with your language. When you said that Barack Obama was [the first African-American candidate who was] clean and articulate, you apologized for it. The Washington Post wrote: "The only thing standing between
Joe Biden and the presidency is his mouth. His Achilles' heel is his mouth." Do you have a problem?
A: Look, this is a very rough game. My referring to Barack as articulate, it was a mistake.
The good thing about being around a long time is people have a basis upon which to judge you. And I didn't find any serious person in the civil rights community, because of my long history and long support for civil rights, thinking that I was trying to
insult Barack Obama in any way. I didn't find anyone suggesting that anything else I have said goes to the heart of whether or not my record is being undercut by what I've stated. But it is true. It is true that my candor sometimes get me in trouble.
Embellishment forced withdrawal from 1988 presidential race
Q: Sometimes your embellishment gets you in trouble. In 1988 you withdrew as a candidate, because, as was written at the time: " Biden's trouble began with the revelation that he had used, without attribution, long portions of a moving address by the
British Labor Party leader, Neil Kinnock. It emerged he had also used passages from the speeches of Robert Kennedy & Hubert Humphrey. It was revealed that Biden had been disciplined as a first-year law student for using portions of a law review article
in a paper without proper attribution and was hit again by a videotape of his appearance in New Hampshire in which he misstated several facts about his academic career." That was a problem.
A: It was.
Q: And you learned from it?
A: I did. It was 20
years ago, and I learned from it. People have had 20 years to judge since then whether or not I am the man they see or I am what I was characterized as being 20 years ago. I learned a lot from it, and, let me tell you, it was a bitter way to learn it.
Biggest mistake was thinking he could work with George Bush
Q What is the most significant professional mistake you have made in the past four years?
A: Overestimating the competence of this administration and underestimating the arrogance.
I really thought, working with the secretary of state and with other Republicans, I could impact on George Bush's thinking. And that was absolutely not within my capacity.
Source: 2007 South Carolina Democratic primary debate, on MSNBC
Apr 26, 2007
Knocked out of 1988 race due to plagiarizing a speech
Senator Joe Biden, who was knocked out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 by Mike Dukakis is hardly the best the Democrats can put forward. Back then, he plagiarized a speech by British Labor Party Leader
Neil Kinnock. Kinnock, who himself went down to defeat by one of the largest margins in UK history, was no role model, and
Biden should have stuck to doing what all other politicians do--plagiarizing the work of their own speechwriters.
Biden has gained some credibility with his articulate, objective and forthcoming analysis of the
Iraq War, given from his perch atop the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But he is, after all, another has-been who never was.
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said yesterday he plans to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 unless he decides later this year that he has little chance of winning. "My intention is to seek the nomination," Biden said on CBS's "Face
the Nation." "I know I'm supposed to be more coy with you. I know I'm supposed to tell you that I'm not sure. But if, in fact, I think that I have a clear shot at winning the nomination by this November or December, then I'm going to seek the nomination.
Source: 2008 Speculation by Dan Balz in Washington Post
Jun 20, 2005
Voted NO on confirming Samuel Alito as Supreme Court Justice.
Vote on the Nomination -- a YES vote would to confirm Samuel A. Alito, Jr., of New Jersey, to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Reference: Alito Nomination;
Bill PN 1059
; vote number 2006-002
on Jan 31, 2006
Voted NO on confirming John Roberts for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Vote on the Nomination (Confirmation John G. Roberts, Jr., of Maryland, to be Chief Justice of the United States )
Reference: Supreme Court Nomination of John Roberts;
Bill PN 801
; vote number 2005-245
on Sep 27, 2005
Religious affiliation: Catholic.
Biden : religious affiliation:
The Adherents.com website is an independent project and is not supported by or affiliated with any organization (academic, religious, or otherwise).
What’s an adherent?
The most common definition used in broad compilations of statistical data is somebody who claims to belong to or worship in a religion. This is the self-identification method of determining who is an adherent of what religion, and it is the method used in most national surveys and polls.
Such factors as religious service attendance, belief, practice, familiarity with doctrine, belief in certain creeds, etc., may be important to sociologists, religious leaders, and others. But these are measures of religiosity and are usually not used academically to define a person’s membership in a particular religion. It is important to recognize there are various levels of adherence, or membership within religious traditions or religious bodies. There’s no single definition, and sources of adherent statistics do not always make it clear what definition they are using.
Source: Adherents.com web site 00-ADH11 on Nov 7, 2000
Rated 100% by the AU, indicating support of church-state separation.
Biden scores 100% by the AU on church-state separation
OnTheIssues.org interprets the 2006 AU scores as follows:
0%- 20%: opposition to church-state separation (approx. 232 members)
21%- 79%: mixed record on church-state separation (approx. 79 members)
80%-100%: support of church-state separation (approx. 153 members)
About the AU (from their website, www.au.org):
Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.
AU is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to preserving the constitutional principle of church-state separation as the only way to ensure religious freedom for all Americans.
Americans United is a national organization with members in all 50 states. We are headquartered in Washington, D.C., and led by the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director. AU has more than 75,000 members from all over the country. They include people from all walks of life and from various faith communities, as well as those who profess no particular faith. We are funded by donations from our members and others who support church-state separation. We do not seek, nor would we accept, government funding.
