07 November 2008

Vice President Joseph Biden

Joe Biden, left, with Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention

The following is excerpted from the U.S. Department of State publication Barack Obama: 44th President of the United States.

“I count my role in helping to end genocide in the Balkans and in securing passage of the Violence Against Women Act as my proudest moments in public life.” So wrote then Senator Joseph R. Biden, the vice president of the United States, in his 2007 autobiography Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics.

Key to understanding this self-appraisal is Biden’s background. He is an Irish Catholic, born under modest circumstances in 1942 in Scranton, a mostly working-class city in northeastern Pennsylvania. His mother was a homemaker; his father, a car salesman. The family moved to the state of Delaware when Biden was 10. He was the first in his family to obtain a college degree and is a graduate of Syracuse University Law School in New York.

The turning point of Biden’s political career came when he was first elected to the U.S. Senate, representing Delaware, in 1972, when he was 29 years old. A few weeks before he was sworn into office, his wife and daughter were killed in an automobile accident. His two young sons survived the accident but were seriously injured. (Biden remarried in 1977, a union that produced a daughter.) Another calamity occurred in 1988 when he was diagnosed with two potentially fatal brain aneurysms. His recovery was long and painful. He was absent from the Senate for seven months, bedridden much of that time.

During his Senate career, Biden compiled a mostly liberal record. Although he is well liked by Republicans and has worked across party lines, he mostly has supported his own party. For example, according to the Washington Post, in his last two years in the Senate, Biden voted with Democrats 96.6 percent of the time. He “is widely seen as a liberal-minded internationalist,” wrote Michael Gordon in the New York Times.  “He has emphasized the need for diplomacy but has been prepared at times to back it with the threat of force.”

U.S. senators, from left, John Kerry, Joseph Biden and Charles Hagel.

In his early years in the Senate, Biden concentrated on domestic issues, particularly civil liberties, law enforcement, and civil rights. He became a member of the Judiciary Committee in 1975 and was its chair from 1987 to 1995. Biden’s most significant legislative accomplishment during this time was the landmark Violence Against Women Act (1994), which he authored. It provides billions of dollars in federal funds to address gender-based crimes. But Biden sometimes departed from the conventional liberal view. He was a strong advocate, for example, of tougher drug sentencing laws. He also opposed busing to achieve racial integration of schools while underlining his commitment to civil rights.

A Foreign Affairs Perspective

Biden distinguished himself in the Senate in foreign affairs. He was a member of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee since 1975 and its chair from 2001 to 2003 and from 2007 until 2009. Barack Obama was assigned to this committee after he was elected to the Senate in 2004 and got to know Biden well as they worked together. Obama headed the Europe subcommittee, formerly chaired by Biden. On a key foreign policy issue, however, Obama and Biden disagreed. Biden voted for the final Senate resolution authorizing a U.S. invasion of Iraq, whereas Obama (not yet in the Senate at the time) spoke out against it.

Prior to voting for the final resolution, however, Biden worked with Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana to pass a resolution authorizing military action only after the exhaustion of diplomatic efforts. Biden voted to authorize the war after that resolution was rejected. But he also voted against an amendment that would have required the Bush administration to seek further authorization before invading Iraq. By 2005, Biden called his vote on Iraq “a mistake.” In a joint appearance in Springfield, Illinois, after Obama selected Biden as his running mate, Obama said Biden is “an expert on foreign policy whose heart and values are rooted firmly in the middle class.” Obama also called Biden “a powerful critic of the Bush-McCain foreign policy and a voice for a new direction that takes the fight to the terrorists and ends the war in Iraq responsibly.”

During his time on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden traveled widely overseas and is on first-name terms not only with many foreign leaders, but also with their deputies and top aides — as well as opposition leaders. He has dealt with such significant issues as arms control, nuclear proliferation, NATO enlargement, superpower rivalry, and U.S. relations with the Third World. He also has been a strong advocate of the Global AIDS Initiative and an early supporter of international efforts to rein in carbon emissions and greenhouse gases. (Biden first drafted climate control legislation two decades ago.) He also has generally backed free trade treaties. The long-term senator has taken a particular interest in Africa. He was an early critic of the apartheid regime in South Africa. In Darfur, he has advocated stronger action to stem the bloodshed there.

Biden’s most significant foreign policy accomplishment, according to most observers, was his effort to combat hostilities in the Balkans during the 1990s. Biden was said to be an influential voice urging the Clinton administration to take action against Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. In their Springfield appearance, Obama said that Biden “helped shape policies that would end the killing in the Balkans.” Specifically, Biden urged intervention to stop ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia. He later supported the NATO bombing campaign to force Serbia to leave Kosovo.

Biden has twice run for the presidency — in 1988 and again in 2008. Both times he was unsuccessful. The Obama campaign said that Biden was selected as a running mate for many reasons but prominently cited the Delaware senator’s expertise and record on foreign policy. Biden is the first Catholic vice president and the first vice president from Delaware.