Biden bursts from twilight of career onto biggest stage

Presumptive US Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at a campaign event in Detroit, Michigan, last month. With his white hair, well-cut suits and every bit the air of a longtime senator, Mr Biden is the fatherly or grandfatherly figure calming a
Presumptive US Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at a campaign event in Detroit, Michigan, last month. With his white hair, well-cut suits and every bit the air of a longtime senator, Mr Biden is the fatherly or grandfatherly figure calming a nation on the verge of a nervous breakdown. PHOTO: NYTIMES

WASHINGTON • He has been scarred by tragedy and failed presidential runs, stumbles while speaking, and is 77. But that same backstory, coupled with unmatched Washington experience, is exactly what Mr Joe Biden bets will win over Americans tired of his polar opposite - President Donald Trump. Mr Biden became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee on Wednesday after the withdrawal of his rival Bernie Sanders.

If Mr Trump brought brash and bombast to the White House, wrecking everything from convention to international treaties along the way, Mr Biden offers reassurance.

Best known as the vice-president of the US under Mr Barack Obama, Mr Biden wants Democrats - and maybe wavering Republicans - to feel they can rewind to pre-2016.

With his white hair, well-cut suits and every bit the air of a longtime senator, Mr Biden is the fatherly or grandfatherly figure calming a nation on the verge of a nervous breakdown. So, while Mr Trump derides him as "Sleepy Joe", Mr Biden bets that after the Republican's turbulent reign, Americans would not mind a bit of a rest after all.

Mr Trump succinctly summarises his politics as "winning, winning, winning". He is 73, but Mr Biden will turn 78 shortly after the November election, which would make him the oldest president ever to take office.

Elected as one of the youngest senators in US history, then serving as vice-president for eight years under America's first black president, Mr Biden is like living history.

His message is built largely on his association with the still popular Mr Obama and his moderate politics in a time of partisan divide.

But where Mr Biden stands out among other Washington old-timers is in showing a painfully human side that contrasts starkly with Mr Trump's all-conquering, never-doubting style. Mr Biden's first wife, Neilia Hunter, and one-year-old daughter, Naomi, died in a car crash in 1972 while Christmas shopping, just weeks after he had defied the odds and won the election to the Senate from Delaware.

The accident left his two sons, Joseph "Beau" Biden III, four, and Robert Hunter Biden, two, badly injured, and the then 30-year-old Mr Biden was sworn in to the Senate beside their hospital beds.

Mr Biden met his second wife, Jill Jacobs, a schoolteacher from Pennsylvania, in 1975, and they married two years later. They have a daughter, Ashley, born in 1981.

Mr Beau Biden followed his father into politics, becoming attorney-general of Delaware and contemplating a run for state governor before dying of brain cancer in 2015, at the age of 46. But Mr Biden's younger son, Hunter, is another matter. With a chequered career as a lawyer and lobbyist, he received a lucrative salary serving on the board of a Ukrainian gas company accused of corruption while his father was vice-president.

The Ukraine affair was, at worst, Mr Biden's allies say, bad optics. Mr Trump, however, believed he had found a candidacy-killing flaw.

As "Uncle Joe", Mr Biden is known for his personal warmth and folksy manner. But he also has a propensity for public gaffes, and his often rambling delivery on the campaign trail has raised questions over his mental agility.

Mr Biden's decades-long political career will make it easy for Mr Trump to highlight errors and embarrassing moments, not least the Democrat's support for the now hugely unpopular Iraq War.

But longevity has also given Mr Biden an advantage - there are few skeletons left in the closet.

And, in a time of turmoil, his claim to experience may prove alluring.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on April 10, 2020, with the headline Biden bursts from twilight of career onto biggest stage. Subscribe