Joe Biden

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. ( ; born November 20, 1942) is an American and . Having defeated incumbent in the , he will be as the 46th president in January 2021. A member of the , Biden previously served as the 47th from 2009 to 2017 and for from 1973 to 2009.

Raised in , and , Biden studied at the before earning his law degree from in 1968. He was elected a in 1970, and became the when he was , at the age of 29. Biden was a longtime member of the , and eventually its chairman. He opposed the in 1991, but supported expanding the alliance into and its intervention in the of the 1990s. He supported the in 2002, but opposed the in 2007. He also chaired the from 1987 to 1995, dealing with drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties issues; he led the effort to pass the and the , and oversaw six confirmation hearings, including the contentious hearings for and . He and .

Biden was reelected to the Senate six times, and was the when he resigned to serve as 's vice president after they won the ; Obama and Biden were . As vice president, Biden oversaw to counteract the . His negotiations with congressional helped pass legislation including the , which resolved a taxation deadlock; the , which resolved a ; and the , which addressed the impending "". He also led efforts to pass the , supported , and helped formulate U.S. policy toward through the . Following the he led the . In January 2017, Obama awarded Biden the with distinction.

In April 2019, Biden announced his , and he reached the delegate threshold needed to secure the Democratic nomination in June 2020. of as his running mate. Biden won the of November 3 against President Trump. Thus, he is only the second non-incumbent vice president to become , besides in

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was born November 20, 1942, at St. Mary's Hospital in , family, he has a sister, Valerie, and two brothers, Francis and James. descent, with roots traced variously to .:8 Joseph Sr.'s parents, Mary Elizabeth (née Robinette) and Joseph H. Biden, an oil businessman from , were of , , and Irish descent.:8

Biden's father was initially wealthy but had suffered several financial setbacks by the time Biden was born; for several years the family lived with Biden's maternal grandparents. Beginning in 1953, the family lived for several years in an apartment in , then moved to a house in ., maintaining the family a middle-class lifestyle. in Claymont, and on the team; he also played baseball. in his junior and senior years.:99 He graduated in 1961. in , Biden briefly played freshman football and earned a degree in 1965 with a in and , and a in .:98 He had a C average and was ranked 506th in his class of 688.

Biden has a , which has improved since his early twenties.:99.[25]

On August 27, 1966, Biden married (July 28, 1942 – December 18, 1972), a student at ,. (February 3, 1969 – May 30, 2015), (born 1970), and Naomi Christina "Amy" Biden (November 8, 1971 – December 18, 1972). from , ranked 76th in his class of 85, and was to the in 1969.[27]
While in school, he received ,.

In 1968, Biden clerked at a law firm headed by prominent local William Prickett and, he later said, "thought of myself as a Republican". He disliked incumbent Democratic Delaware governor 's conservative racial politics and supported a more liberal Republican, , who defeated Terry in 1968. because of his distaste for Republican presidential candidate . and then at a firm headed by a locally active Democrat who named him to the Democratic Forum, a group trying to reform and revitalize the state party; He and another attorney also formed a law firm., however, did not appeal to him, and did not pay well.

Later that year Biden was elected to a seat in a usually Republican district of , running on a liberal platform that included support for public housing in the suburbs.:59 He served on the council, while still practicing law, until 1972. He opposed large highway projects that might disrupt Wilmington neighborhoods.[7]:62

1972 U.S. Senate campaign

In 1972, Biden defeated Republican incumbent to become the junior U.S. senator from Delaware. He was the only Democrat willing to challenge Boggs; Family members managed and staffed the campaign, which relied on meeting voters face-to-face and hand-distributing position papers, He received some help from the and Democratic pollster . but his energy, attractive young family, and ability to connect with voters' emotions worked to his advantage,

Death of wife and daughter

On December 18, 1972, Biden's wife Neilia and their one-year-old daughter Amy were killed in an automobile accident in .:93, 98 but doctors predicted they would recover fully. but persuaded him not to.[37]

Biden was sworn in on January 5, 1973, by at the ;:93, 98 present were Beau (whose leg was still in traction), Hunter, and other family.:93, 98 At 30, he was the .

To see his sons every day, But the accident had filled him with anger and religious doubt. He wrote later that he "felt God had played a horrible trick" on him,, with the renewal of his interest in politics and life; and were married at the United Nations chapel in New York on June 17, 1977. They are Roman Catholics and attend Mass at in . (born 1981)

became an Army serving in the , and later ; is a Washington attorney and lobbyist.[54]

Early Senate activities

During his early years in the Senate, Biden focused on consumer protection and environmental issues and called for greater government accountability. named him one of the 200 Faces for the Future.. of the in 1981. In 1984, he was a Democratic floor manager for the successful passage of the ; over time, the law's tough-on-crime provisions became controversial and in 2019, Biden called his role in passing the bill a "big mistake". His supporters praised him for modifying some of the law's worst provisions, and it was his most important legislative accomplishment to that time.:216

In 1993, Biden voted for a provision that deemed homosexuality incompatible with military life, thereby banning gays from serving in the armed forces., which prohibited the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, thereby barring individuals in such marriages from equal protection under federal law and allowing states to do the same;.. After Congress failed to ratify the Treaty signed in 1979 by Soviet premier and President , Biden met with Soviet Foreign Minister to communicate American concerns, and secured changes that addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's objections. wanted to interpret the 1972 treaty loosely to allow development of the , Biden argued for strict adherence to the treaty. at a Senate hearing for the Reagan administration's support of despite its continued policy of .[30]

Opposition to busing

In the mid-1970s, Biden was one of the Senate's leading opponents of . His Delaware constituents strongly opposed it, and such opposition nationwide later led his party to mostly abandon school integration policies. , as in the South, but opposed its use to remedy segregation arising from racial patterns of neighborhood residency, as in Delaware; he opposed a proposed constitutional amendment banning busing entirely. In May 1974, Biden voted to table a proposal containing anti-busing and anti-desegregation clauses but later voted for a modified version containing a qualification that it was not intended to weaken the judiciary's power to enforce the and .] This, along with the prospect of a busing plan in Wilmington, led Biden to align himself with anti-busing senators. from cutting federal funds to districts that refused to integrate; he said busing was a "bankrupt idea [violating] the cardinal rule of common sense" and that his opposition would make it easier for other liberals to follow suit.

Biden supported a measure[] forbidding the use of federal funds for transporting students beyond the school closest to them. In 1977, he co-sponsored an amendment closing loopholes in that measure, which President Carter signed into law in 1978.[74]

1988 presidential campaign

Biden formally declared his candidacy for the on June 9, 1987. hearings, and his appeal to ; he would have been the second-youngest person elected president, after .:108–109 and in September, he was accused of a speech by British leader .[77] Kinnock's speech included the lines:

Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? [Then pointing to his wife in the audience] Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because all our predecessors were thick?

Biden's speech included the lines:

I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university? [Then pointing to his wife in the audience] Why is it that my wife who is sitting out there in the audience is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? Is it because I'm the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college and a graduate degree that I was smarter than the rest?

Biden had credited Kinnock with the formulation on previous occasions, but did not on two occasions in late August. Earlier that year he had also used passages from a 1967 speech by (for which his aides took blame) and a short phrase from ; two years earlier he had used a 1976 passage by ., had called him to point out that he (Jackson) had used the same material by Humphrey that Biden had used.

A few days later, an incident came to light from Biden's time in law school.[81]
During his first year he submitted a paper that relied almost exclusively on a article, which he had cited only once, and drew "chunks of heavy legal prose directly" from it; He was required to repeat the course and passed with high marks.

He also made several false or exaggerated claims about his early life: that he had earned three degrees in college, that he had attended law school on a full scholarship, that he had graduated in the top half of his class,. and on September 23, 1987, Biden withdrew from the race, saying his candidacy had been overrun by "the exaggerated shadow" of his past mistakes.[88]

Brain surgeries

In February 1988, after several episodes of increasingly severe neck pain, Biden was taken by ambulance to for surgery to correct a leaking . While recuperating he suffered a , a serious complication.

Senate Judiciary Committee

Biden was a longtime member of the . He chaired it from 1987 to 1995 and was from 1981 to 1987 and from 1995 to 1997.

As chairman, Biden presided over two highly contentious confirmation hearings.[15]
When in 1988, Biden reversed his approval‍—‌given in an interview the previous year‍—‌of a hypothetical Bork nomination. Conservatives were angered, Biden framed his objections to Bork in terms of the conflict between Bork's strong and the view that the provides rights to liberty and privacy beyond those explicitly enumerated in its text. and then in the full Senate, 58–42. in 1991, Biden's questions on constitutional issues were often convoluted to the point that Thomas sometimes lost track of them,"., a law school professor, had accused Thomas of when they had worked together. Biden had known of some of these charges, but had initially shared them only with the committee because at the time Hill had been unwilling to testify. Biden said he wanted to preserve Thomas's privacy and the hearings' decency. The full Senate confirmed Thomas by a 52–48 vote, with Biden opposed. Biden later sought out women to serve on the Judiciary Committee and emphasized women's issues in the committee's legislative agenda.

Biden has helped craft many federal crime laws. He spearheaded the ; this included the and the ,

Biden was critical of during the 1990s and investigations, saying "it's going to be a cold day in hell" before another independent counsel would be granted similar powers.., Biden wrote the laws that created the U.S. "", who oversees and coordinates national drug control policy. In 2003, he introduced the . He worked to control " drugs" such as , party drugs such as and , and commonly abused such as .[15]

Senate Foreign Relations Committee