What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  Sweet Jesus, he is terrific. There aren’t ten voters in the country who’d work against him, once he’s had them face-to-face. And Jean is catching it, too. She’s lost that studied helpful air of the prompter for the cameras. Now she’s just watching, and her mouth is parted, and her head bobs accord with his words. He’s slow now, just explaining, like the words echo in his own head. “And a House member can do it,” he says. “Mo Udall proved that a House member can do well in New Hampshire. And a House member is the one who can work with the Congress. I think that I could work with the Congress to get us moving, which is what we need ...”

  She’s nodding as he finishes. He’s talked for maybe ten minutes straight. She sits back and she wants to gush, but it takes her a moment to shake off his eyes. “Really,” she says, “you have more ideas! I mean ... I feel I’ve gotten an education in fifteen minutes, and, really, I have never ... well, you’re great!”

  Dick is still locked on her, taking this in, unblinking, unblushing. A little smile is his only acknowledgment of her words. He’s watching to see the hook set.

  “And another thing,” Jean is saying, her eyes taking in the room now, conscious once again of the cameras. “I’ve heard answers from people ... but I feel like it’s coming from a computer. With you, I feel like it’s coming from a person.” ... Yes, the hook is set.

  “Well, I’ve been studying this for a long time,” Dick says, a modest merit-badge winner.

  “Well, I’ve just never had anybody sit down and tell me, like that, exactly what they want to do ...”

  “Oh,” Dick says, and it just pops out, the most honest thing he’ll say all day: “Oh, I know what I want to do!”

  “I think you can do it,” Jean replies. “I really do.”

  “Can we count on your help?”

  “I’d love to. I’d really love to. I really ...” She hasn’t words. She shrugs and says to Gephardt: “You’re great!”

  There is a small scraping sound as Dick’s feet gather under his chair. He bends, suddenly, to his ice cream, gooey now, almost untouched. He says to the dish of chocolatey mung: “We’re gonna have to go.”

  Jean is saying to a local Minicam: “I’ve never seen such a depth of knowledge along with a vision of what he wants to do. And in a way where he’s not really criticizing the American people, but telling them what to do ...”

  The furrowed brow behind the camera asks: “And you didn’t have your mind made up before?”

  “No, uh, no. Absolutely.”

  “Isn’t she a nice person?” Jane says, as she and Dick, Demers and the body-Brad get back to the Chevrolet. “So genuine!” Jane’s step is light; there’s no sign now of her protective hunch. Dick has brought his ice cream along. He turns on the all-news radio and opens the Globe as the car starts to move. He’s scraping the dish. He loves ice cream. For the first time all day, the car feels right.

  “Uhh Dick? ...” This from Brad, in the backseat.

  Gephardt doesn’t turn around. He’s got his face in the Globe, his mouth around the spoon. “Hmm?” he murmurs. He doesn’t sound eager. “Never get to eat on this job,” he mumbles.

  “Uh, Dick? One thing.” Brad is insistent. He knows campaigns. He helped Hamilton Jordan lose a Senate race in Georgia. His voice is hectoring over the radio and road noise, and lands with a slap on the back of Dick’s neck. “On an event like that, uh, that one. That was s’posed to be a people-to-people event. Now, uh, the thing we wanted to do there was to show you sitting there talking to that woman and, if you noticed, most of the cameras were packing up after you answered their questions ...”

  “Mmm ...” Gephardt is trying to ignore him. Dick still won’t turn around, but from the back, you can see his head sinking bit by bit between his shoulders.

  “So, uh, Dick. On an event like that, when you come in, uh, don’t answer any questions. We have to control, uh, we have to dictate the uh, media, uh, hit. So, when you go in, just, um, do what you’re s’posed to do. All right?”

  Gephardt’s head is now thrust forward into his paper. The exposed back of his neck is pink. All the good feeling in the car is gone. Gephardt says into the folds of his Globe:

  “Mmm hmm, I understand.”

  19

  1954

  THE MUD IN DELEWARE stinks. It’s clay, really, and you get used to it—it’s not bad unless you dig it up wet. But when you get a whole soggy swampful dug, it smells like someone died in there ... and that was the smell, the day they got to the new place, the day they were going to start their new lives: Joe, Sr., Jean and Val and the boys, the Bidens, of Wilmington, Delaware.

  Actually, it wasn’t even Wilmington, but Claymont, a steelworking suburb to the north, near the river, where in the fifties they were putting up ticky-tack houses, and garden apartments (except there were no gardens, just this malodorous mud), and when the Bidens drove in that day, to Brookview Apartments—they were among the first tenants—the place was a bulldozed moonscape, a stinking mess. Brookview would never be beautiful: strings of one-story yellow stucco boxes—efficiencies—appended to larger, two-story units at mid-horseshoe ... so there were these horseshoes of stucco marching across the gray mud with the promise of eventual, unlovely overcrowding: an instant slum. You could see it at one glance, through the windshield, as you drove up. ... And from the backseat, where he sat with his sister and brother, Joe Biden looked at his mother, and she was crying.

  “Mom, what’sa matter?”

  There was an instant’s pause, as Jean Biden tried to make her face a smile. “I’m just so happy,” she said.

  “Honey,” Joe, Sr., said from the driver’s seat, “it’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna ... it’s just to start ...”

  Now, from Joey in the back: “What’s wrong?”

  Jean Biden turned quickly and said: “Nothing’s wrong, honey.” And then she turned back—must have taken all the will she had—turned back to Joe, Sr., and hugged him:

  “It’s wonderful—thanks ...” Jean said. “I’m just so happy ... I can’t stop crying.”

  Joe, Sr., just couldn’t hack it anymore in Scranton—not with the old man, Jean’s father, silent in his armchair, and Gertie in the attic, and Boo-Boo all over the house (his house, the Finnegan house). When brother Frank Biden called from Wilmington and said he knew of a job there ... well, it didn’t matter what the job was, it would be easier than swallowing another day in Scranton.

  So, Joe, Sr., started driving back and forth, each week, started cleaning out boilers—that was his work in Wilmington. And then he landed a job at Kyle Motors, in sales, and they liked the way he carried himself, the air of distinction he lent to the place, so right away they made him manager of sales ... and that’s when he moved the family, to Claymont.

  It was still a far cry from the big place outside Boston, the beautiful house in Garden City, Long Island—wasn’t half as nice as the place they left in Scranton. But at least they’d be on their own. And Joseph was going to get back, see: he never liked that used-car job, never—it was only a start. And the house, well ... there’d be a better house. After a year, he moved Jean and the kids to a real house in Arden, a rental place, but better ... and after another year, they moved to the house on Wilson Road. For nineteen years, they lived on Wilson, but to Joseph, it was always temporary. He was going to get back to a really good house, he was going to make it again, every day ... he’d get up, and he’d say: Today, I’m going to turn that corner, get the big break, today. ... That was the great thing about him: he would never, never quit.

  And to Joey, who watched this ... every day ... that was the difference between balls and courage. That was better than daring ... that was guts. And Joey meant to have guts. He would never, never quit.

  A stutter is a cruel affliction for a kid, because no one, not even he, can see anything wrong. It’s not like a club foot, or a missing finger—where there’s something physically, visibly wrong, and you have simply to shrug and do the best you can. No, a stutter is mo
re insidious: it attacks directly a child’s ability to make himself known and felt in the world. But indirectly—because there’s nothing wrong—it attacks his own idea of himself, his self-esteem, his confidence: Why can’t he talk right?

  Joe did not stutter all the time. At home, he almost never stuttered. With his friends, seldom. But when he moved to Delaware, there were no friends. There were new kids, a new school, and new nuns to make him stand up and read in class: that’s when it always hit—always always always. When he stood up in front of everybody else, and he wanted, so much, to be right, to be smooth, to be smart, to be normal, j-j-ju-ju-ju-ju-jus’th-th-th-th-then!

  Of course, they laughed. Why wouldn’t they laugh? He was new, he was small, he was ... ridiculous ... even to him. There was nothing wrong. That’s what the doctors said.

  So why couldn’t he talk right?

  He learned to dread. He’d be coming to school, running from the bus—flushed, healthy, full of juice—and then he’d remember: Oh, God, it’s my day to read in Latin class. God! ... and the joy was gone from the morning.

  He learned to scheme. In Catholic school, kids sit in rows. “A-a” takes the first seat, front of the row on the teacher’s far left. “A-b” will have the next seat back, and so on. Biden would usually sit in the middle of that far left row, maybe four or five seats from the front. And when the nun would start the readings, it was easy for a smart kid like Joey to count the paragraphs down the page ... three, four ... five—to find his paragraph, and memorize it. Somehow, it was easier, his mouth worked better, if he didn’t have to look at the page.

  He learned what cruelty, unfairness, was—a dozen ways, but all from the wrong end of the stick. There was a kid in class, Jimmy Lanahan, who used to give Joe fits. Every time he stood up to read, Lanahan would start on him:

  “B-b-b-b-b-b-BIDEN!”

  Of course, that only turned the screws tighter, and Joey would stumble, have to look down at the page, and then it was over:

  “P-p-p-p-ar-r-r-ret omn-n-n-n-iamqu-qu-qu-qu-”

  In a whisper, from behind: “B-b-b-b-b-BIDEN!”

  “... qu-que v-v-v-vi-v-vinc-c-c-c-it ...”

  And from the sister at the head of the classroom: “All right, Mr. Biden. That will be enough.”

  Thing was, he knew they were wrong to mock him. There was a saying in Jean Biden’s house: “Never kid a fat person about being fat.” You could punch some kid in the nose—sure—but you did not, could not, attack his dignity.

  One day, he stood to read, and from behind, Lanahan let him have it: “B-b-b-b-b-b-Biden!” And Joey turned around and got Jimmy—by the neck—and held on, shouted in his face:

  “You sh-sh-shut up! I’m reading here!”

  Mostly, he got mad at himself: ashamed of his own helplessness. He always felt he was imposing on them. The class should not have to sit there, and l-l-l-li-lih-l-listen to him, t-t-t-t-trying to get out a p-p-p-p-pa-pa-paragraph th-tha-th-that everyone else w-w-w-w-wuh-wuh-would’ve f-f-f-f-f-ffinished!

  One of the nuns in Scranton had told him he’d do better if he got into a rhythm, a verbal march that would help him keep step while he read. So when Joe got to Wilmington, and schemed ahead to find his reading, he’d break each sentence into rhythmic bursts, till he could hear it, by memory, bouncing in his head. One day, that first school year in Wilmington, Joe skipped ahead to find his paragraph in the story of Sir Walter Raleigh:

  “Then, the gentleman put the cloak across the puddle, so the lady could step ...”

  And he broke it up in his head to hear the footfalls of its march:

  THEN the GEN-tle

  MAN put the CLOAK

  a-CROSS the PUDdle

  So the LA-dy could

  STEP...

  And that’s the way he spoke it—he was getting along great!

  Then the nun broke in: “What is that word, Mr. Biden?”

  “W-w-wh? ...”

  “The third word, Mr. Biden! Read it!”

  Joey froze. He could only say it as he’d heard it in his head: “GEN-tle MAN ...”

  “Mr. Biden! Look at the page, and read it!”

  Joey could not look at the page and read it—he knew he’d lose it. What was the word? Did he have the wrong word?

  “GEN-tle MAN ...”

  “That will be all,” the teacher snapped, “Mr. B-b-Biden.”

  Joe put his book down, silent in his shame, and just walked out of the class.

  Thing was, Joe, Sr., never could get out of selling those cars: there were four kids now—the youngest, Frankie, was born in Delaware—and Catholic schools for all of them, and the mortgage for the house on Wilson ... so, it was the sales lot, every day, and evenings till nine, and Saturdays, too. He never could trade up to a house of distinction ... no, it was a three-bedroom tract house, like its neighbors.

  And no room to spare—that was for sure. His daughter, Val, had to have her own room, so the boys, all three, slept in one small bedroom ... and the dining table was spread with their homework, and the living room was an obstacle course of kids asprawl ... and then Boo-Boo showed up. At first, he only came to drop off his father—Joey’s granddad—to stay with Jean for a few weeks, while Boo-Boo was on the road, selling Serta mattresses. But even after Pop Finnegan died, Boo-Boo would drop by for visits. And then one weekend, he came to visit, and stayed for eighteen years. Then, it was four in the boys’ room: two bunk beds, top and bottom. ... And meanwhile, the Widow Sheen moved to Wilmington and lived with the Bidens for two years. Even after they found her a room in a private house nearby, she’d still put on her white gloves and come to lunch almost every day. ... And then her son, Bill, Jr., moved into the Bidens’ rec room for a year or so ... and then, too, Frank Biden’s wife died, and he was so lonely, he had to move in. Joseph and Jean took care of them all. That’s the way it was, with the Bidens.

  But the big one was Boo-Boo, a presence in the house, and an object lesson for Joey: Boo-Boo stuttered. Edward Blewitt Finnegan was a smart man, a college man—had dreamed of becoming a doctor—but he stuttered. And the way Boo-Boo styled his life, it was a t-t-t-tuh-tuh-tragedy: he couldn’t go to med school when he talked like that! ... It wasn’t that he didn’t try, was it? The stutter was his explanation, an alibi in constant evidence.

  But Jean Biden would have none of it. Blewitt was her brother, and she told it like it was. He could have gone to medical school, if he’d tried—if it took twenty years. There was no excuse, in Jean Biden’s book, for giving up. She would not let Boo-Boo mention his stutter and his failure in the same breath, without shaking her head, rolling her eyes ... or calling him out, right in his face, in true Finnegan style: “Edward Blewitt Finnegan! That’s a goddam lie!”

  And she would not let Joey give up—not for one day, not for an hour: he would beat this ... there was more to him than stutter. He had his Biden grace. He had talent. He had brains. She must have told him ten thousand times: “Joey, it’s just that you are so smart ... your mind outruns your ability to say your thoughts.”

  “Joey, you have such a high IQ ...”

  “Joey Biden, you’re just smarter than anybody ...”

  But she needn’t have worried. Joey was not short on will. And he had eyes to see what he didn’t want to be. He did not want to be Boo-Boo, arguing with schoolboys about their lessons, to show how smart he was. He did not want to have to alibi. He did not want to drive every week through five states, selling mattresses—no.

  He knew it just as surely as he knew the other truth of his young life: he was not going to sell cars—no way. He didn’t know how his father could stand it. He would not be slave to a mortgage on a tract house; he would not end up trapped on that treadmill. No. He was a Biden and he could do ... anything.

  It wasn’t quick, it took years. But he learned to game it out. He learned, always, to see himself in the situation to come, to think what he’d say, how he’d sound, what the other guy would say, and what the answer would be ...

  He
had a paper route, and a neighbor, an old chatty man, who was always around ... and Joey knew (he could see it, like it already happened!) that if he wore his Yankee baseball cap, the old man would ask him about the Yankee game last night, and Joey would say:

  “Mantle hit a home run ...”

  “Man-tle-hit-a-home-run ...”

  “Mick-ey-Man-tle-hit-a-homer ...”

  He could see where he’d be standing on the walk, in front of the porch, and he’d hand the man his paper ...

  “Yeah-Mick-ey-Man-tle-hit-a-homer ...”

  “They-beat-Cleve-land-four-to-one ...”

  He’d play the thing over and over in his mind: everything the guy could ask him ... everything Joey would have to say. And he’d make sure to wear his Yankee cap. That was the key.

  He lived so much of his life in his head, in the future, that he had more than a child’s understanding of how people were likely to react. Of course, every kid thinks that way about adults, to a certain extent, if only to stay out of trouble ... but Joey had to know more. He had to know what they’d say, what he could say, how he’d be, how he’d sound, how he’d look. And then, if they said that ... what would he say then?

  And so, he had more than a child’s understanding of what he wanted to do. That’s what his new friends in Wilmington saw. Joe always had an idea. ... If their notion of a summer evening’s prank was to put a bag of dogshit on old man Schutz’s doorstep, Joey would say, “No, here’s what we’ll do. You know behind my house, where they got all those little trees? Get a shovel ...” And they did: they went out with shovels and planted a forest of saplings on Mr. Schutz’s lawn. It was so much more elaborate—all thought out, the way Joey had it figured.