Promise Me, Dad
Page 22
* * *
President Obama had a surprise for me at his final State of the Union address, in January 2016. “Last year, Vice President Biden said that with a new moonshot, America can cure cancer,” he said, about twenty-five minutes into the speech. “Tonight, I’m announcing a new national effort to get it done. And because he’s gone to the mat for all of us, on so many issues over the past forty years, I’m putting Joe in charge of mission control. For the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the family we can still save, let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all. What do you say, Joe?” I was receiving this news at the same time the rest of the country did. As the president turned to me and nodded, I looked out and saw former colleagues on both sides of the aisle on their feet, applauding. It gave me hope that we could do something significant.
Barack had seen what my family had gone through the last few years, not only the hard times, but the times when the genius and the effort of the medical team at M. D. Anderson had given us real hope. He had heard me in the White House Rose Garden a few months earlier when I spoke of my only real regret about not running: that I would not be the president who oversaw the end of cancer as we know it. When the president handed me mission control, every member of the federal bureaucracy knew that I had his full authority to martial all the assets within the government—as well as to reach out to the expert community nationally and internationally. This was the first time any president had delegated the authority to one individual to get the job done. He was handing me a remarkable opportunity—a chance to help save other families from what we had just gone through.
I have spent the past few years working to accelerate the fight against cancer. I believe we are on the cusp of real and significant breakthroughs, and I have dedicated myself to doing two things—bringing a sense of urgency to the fight and making sure the systems of prevention, research, and patient care are designed to take advantage of the best of twenty-first-century science and technology. We’re on the verge of supercomputer capability that will provide a billion billion calculations per second—increasing our chances of finding new answers if we can bring together data from thousands, or millions, of patients. I have been encouraging a system that honors team science and increased collaboration and data sharing among clinicians, researchers, and medical experts at the different cancer centers across the nation and around the world. I have been working to make the best prevention and care available to all communities, so outcomes aren’t wholly dictated by zip code, and helping to find ways to incentivize pharmaceutical companies to work with one another to provide for more combination therapies in clinical trials. At the heart of it all is my desire to encourage a system and a culture that put the interests of the patients and their families ahead of all other considerations. I learned first-hand, the hardest way possible, that facing down cancer is a frightening and costly ordeal in the best of circumstances, for the strongest of families. We need to identify any and all extra obstacles placed in front of these suffering people, mark these obstacles as inexcusable, and work to abolish them.
The effort has bipartisan support in Congress, help from businesses across the country, and commitments from many other countries to engage with us in the effort to end cancer as we know it. The goal is within our reach, and reaching that goal will remind us of something the country seems to have lost sight of: There is nothing we cannot accomplish as Americans if we set our minds to it. There is no challenge we cannot meet. I am more optimistic about our chances today than when I was elected to the Senate as a twenty-nine-year-old kid. The twenty-first century is going to be another American Century.
* * *
As I write this, in the summer of 2017, I still think of the question Barack put to me in his private dining room just off the Oval Office back in January 2015. “Joe,” he had asked, “how do you want to spend the rest of your life?” The answer I gave him then still holds today. In fact, it was the same answer I would have given when I was making my start in public life. The same answer I would have given every time I ran for the United States Senate. The same answer I would have given when I left my thirty-six-year career in the Senate to become vice president. The same answer I would have given before Beau got his diagnosis, and all through his battle with cancer, and every day since. The difference now is that I have another voice in my head, both calming and insistent. You’ve got to promise me, Dad, that no matter what happens, you’re going to be all right. Give me your word, Dad. You’re going to be all right.
Beau had not been explicit that night at his dinner table, just weeks before our final Nantucket Thanksgiving together, when he asked me to make that promise. He didn’t have to be. We could always finish each other’s thoughts. Beau’s meaning was clear. He was also counting on Hunt to be there to make sure I kept my promise. And I wear Beau’s rosary around my wrist every day now, as I have since he passed, as a reminder of what he was expecting of me. I had to do my duty—for the duration. I had to do my job as husband, father, and Pop. I had to pull my weight to help Hallie take care of the children, Natalie and Hunter. I had to be present for Jill and Hunt and Ashley. But family was not the main thing. Beau knew the family was built solid, that there was no tide strong enough to wash it away. He had faith that it would endure. There was so much more for me to do beyond the family, and he was worried I would retreat from my obligations to the wider world. Beau was insisting that I stay true to myself and to all the things I had worked for over the years. He was making me promise to stay engaged in the public life of the nation and the world. Home base, Dad. Home base.
So how do I want to spend the rest of my life? I want to spend as much time as I can with my family, and I want to help change the country and the world for the better. That duty does much more than give me purpose; it gives me something to hope for. It makes me nostalgic for the future.
Acknowledgments
This story was not an easy one for me to tell. There were many days I found it difficult to go back and revisit this time period; and my memories of events were sometimes foggy. There were a number of people I counted on to help me with recall, with the reconstruction chronologies, and with encouragement.
Thank you for all this, and more, to Kathy Chung, Mark and Libby Gitenstein, Colin Kahl, Michael Carpenter, Juan Gonzalez, Jeffrey Prescott, and Tony Blinken.
To Steve Ricchetti, Mike Donilon, Danielle Carnival, Don Graves, and Bob Bauer.
To Kevin O’Connor and John Flynn.
Thank you to the extraordinary team at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center: Dr. W. K. Alfred Yung, Dr. Raymond Sawaya, Dr. David Ferson, Dr. Frederick Lang, Eva Lu Lee, Chris Hagerman, and Yolanda Hart.
Thank you also to the folks at CAA for shepherding this book to a publisher—Richard Lovett, Craig Gering, Mollie Glick, and David Larabell; and to the folks at Flatiron Books for shepherding this book to the reader—Bob Miller, Colin Dickerman, Greg Villepique, and James Melia.
This book would not be possible without the extraordinary talent, patience, and hard work of Mark Zwonitzer. I cannot thank Mark enough.
And thank you to my daughter-in-law Hallie, my daughter Ashley, my son Hunter, my son-in-law Howard, and my brother Jimmy. Special thanks to my sister Valerie. And most especially, thank you, Jill.
ALSO BY JOE BIDEN
Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joe Biden represented Delaware for 36 years in the U.S. Senate before serving as the 47th vice president of the United States from 2009 to 2017.
Since leaving the White House, Vice President Biden continues his legacy of expanding opportunity for all with the creation of the Biden Foundation, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Biden Institute for Domestic Policy at the University of Delaware. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
ONE: Biden Family Thanksgiving
TWO: Have a Purpose
THREE: Solace
FOUR: Trust
FIVE: Keeping Busy
SIX: It Has to Be You
SEVEN: Calculated Risks
EIGHT: Home Base
NINE: You Have to Tell Them the Truth
TEN: Can You Stay?
ELEVEN: Run, Joe, Run
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ALSO BY JOE BIDEN
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT
PROMISE ME, DAD. Copyright © 2017 by CelticCapri Corp. All rights reserved. For information, address Flatiron Books, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.flatironbooks.com
Cover design by Keith Hayes
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-17167-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-17168-9 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250171689
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First Edition: November 2017