The Book of Joe

by Jeff Wilser

  “Well, I’ll give you a story,” says Haltzel, who was once again in the center of the foreign policy action. “And when I tell the young staffers on the Hill this, their jaws drop.” In 1998, the Foreign Relations Committee held debates on NATO expansion for seven straight days, morning to night, which is like March Madness for C-SPAN junkies. At the time, the Republicans controlled Congress, so Republican Jesse Helms served as the chairperson. “If you know anything about the Senate, every bill has a floor manager,” says Haltzel. “And the floor manager determines which amendments will be considered, what order they’ll be taken up, the order of speaking…everything. He or she basically runs the show. And this wasn’t just any old bill. This was a treaty ratification. And it wasn’t just any old treaty, but the most important ratification in sixty years.”

  Here’s the wrinkle: “Jesse Helms, as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, should have been the floor manager, but Helms was not up to it intellectually or physically,” says Haltzel. So he assumed that the Republicans would tap John McCain as floor manager, or maybe Republican Gordon Smith, from Oregon. “You know who they chose as manager? Joe Biden.”

  The Republicans chose Biden over one of their own. “It is absolutely incredible, and I tell staffers that and they just don’t believe it. And that shows the confidence [Republicans] had in him, and it was simply just remarkable.”

  The final passage of the NATO enlargement was 80 to 19, which makes it look like a slam-dunk, a gimme. But the final vote overlooks some crucial nuance. “I mean, all the books that were written about first round NATO enlargement were just wrong,” says Haltzel. “They said it was inevitable, it was gonna happen. The final passage was 80 to 19, but you needed sixty-six or sixty-seven, depending on how many people were there, to pass it. Biden himself must have convinced ten people. It could have been really nip and tuck. If he had gone the other way, I don’t think it would have passed.”

  So why would the Republicans tap Biden to be the floor manager? There are a few reasons. The first, of course, is that he’s likable as hell. He had buddies everywhere. For decades he had remembered birthdays, asked about kids, and broke bread with Republicans at lunch. And Republicans knew Biden had that moxie on the global stage (even if he couldn’t nail the names). “He would greet the vice president of another country in the same way that he hails an old friend from Scranton,” says videographer Arun Chaudhary, after seeing him in action. “With this understanding, familiarity, and unbelievable warmth.”

  Yet chummy gets you only so far. The deeper truth, and the one that doesn’t grab many headlines or slingshot around Twitter, is that Biden had quietly, methodically done his homework and commanded all of the details. And his colleagues knew it, on both the Left and the Right.

  Example: The main argument against ratification of the NATO treaty was one of cost. Would it cost the taxpayers more? So Biden threw himself into the economics of NATO, just as he did with the intellectual underpinnings of Bork. He had his team assemble a briefing book that was “probably twelve inches thick,” remembers Haltzel. “Biden just took it as a matter of pride that he was gonna go back and look at all the cost factors, the infrastructural cost, what it would cost to build airfields, what it would cost the U.S. taxpayer. I mean, just every possible thing you could imagine. And he mastered it.”

  Few can throw stones at Biden’s foreign policy cred, yet this is not to say that his record is spotless. He now has the unpleasant task of justifying how he voted against invading Iraq in 1990, then for invading Iraq in 2003, and then later against the troop surge in 2007. Debates can be had about each of these votes—and the nuance abounds—but you could make the case that he batted 0 for 3.

  In the case of the first Iraq war, he argued, on principle, that the president needed congressional authority to go to war, and he cited the Constitution and the Founders, and more than twenty years before it was cool, he cited Alexander Hamilton. He would do so again in 1998, arguing, “On this point, the writings of Alexander Hamilton, a very strong defender…of Presidential power, is very instructive….In Federalist 69, Hamilton emphasized that the President’s power as Commander in Chief would be ‘much inferior’ to that of the British King, amounting to ‘nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces.’ ”

  Biden’s point? The Framers—and Hamilton—didn’t just want Congress to rubber-stamp the approval of a war, but actually have real teeth. So Biden tried to curb the president’s wartime powers, an issue that goes back to Nixon and Vietnam. “The Founding Fathers had little interest, it seems, in the ceremonial aspects of war. The real issue was congressional authorization of war….Even in 1789—to quote Hamilton…” and then he went on for a while, as he is wont to do.

  And while we’re speaking of that first Iraq war, even when Biden got things wrong, he seemed willing to take his lumps if it was good for America. He had voted against the war, and clearly, if Bush Senior failed, that would make him less likely to win re-election in 1992. (At the height of the Gulf War, Bush’s approval rating soared to 89 percent.) Biden’s reaction? Excellent. Good for him. “If the president successfully prosecutes the war, and I hope he does,” he said, “that’s worth losing the White House.”

  WISDOM OF JOE

  Nation over party.

  For twenty years, the timing was never quite right for another presidential charge of the light brigade. In 1992, Biden still had the odor of the plagiarism scandal and the Clarence Thomas hearings. The election of 1996, of course, belonged to Bubba. In 2000, Gore had dibs as the heir apparent. In 2004, in a moment of clear self-assessment, Biden read the political landscape and determined that it’s “too much of a long shot.”

  Yet in 2008? Biden must have been thinking, For Pete’s sake, I’ve put in my time.

  And he didn’t try to hide it. Biden did something that politicians are never supposed to do: He admitted that he wanted to be president. “It is my intention to seek the nomination,” he said in 2005, more than three years before the election. “I know I’m supposed to be more coy with you.”

  In an echo of ’88, once again, the Republicans had back-to-back terms in the White House, and after eight years of a guy “you could get a beer with,” the Democrats were feeling bullish. In another echo of ’88, Biden looked around at the other Democratic wannabes: John Edwards, Tom Vilsack, Dennis freakin’ Kucinich. He outranked all of them. He outcharmed all of them. “I don’t think John Edwards knows what the heck he is talking about,” he said at the time. (Okay, so Never neg, at times, is more Usually try not to neg.)

  Another candidate: Hillary Clinton. Hmmmm. Trickier.

  And what about this new wild card, the junior senator from Illinois? The one with the funny name? In a 2007 interview, Biden said, “I’d be a little surprised if he actually does run.” He then suggested that Barack Obama was on “everyone’s number-two list,” as in an option for vice president. Oh, Joe.

  In 2007, he made it official. “I am running for president. I’m going to be Joe Biden, and I’m going to try to be the best Biden I can be. If I can, I’ve got a shot. If I can’t, I lose.”

  He knew it was a dicey gamble. So why do it? “He knew there was an easier life if he didn’t run for president,” explains Ted Kaufman, his longtime friend. “Jill agreed, but both of them were of the opinion that he had, really, a responsibility to try to do it….Growing old is not a whole lot of fun, but one of the advantages of my age is you really can try. Joe Biden is the same way. What would he think of himself if he didn’t even try to be president?”

  It wasn’t about power, fame, or legacy, says Kaufman. “I think a lot of it comes out of an obligation to serve. It’s the same reason why Barack Obama didn’t go to work on Wall Street when he got out of Harvard and went to work as a community organizer. It’s an extension of that. It’s all about how you are hardwired, about how important service is to you. And with Joe Biden, service is his life.”

  You have to feel for
Biden. For decades he had worked and worked and worked to become, arguably, one of the most qualified presidential candidates in history. Who had more tenure? Who had more foreign policy experience? Who else had saved America from a Justice Bork? It must have been tough to see this up-and-coming crop of candidates promising hope and change. That used to be my thing!

  Remember how, back in 1972, twenty-nine-year-old Joe Biden used to fill up high school gyms, thrill the teenagers, and get them to hand-deliver his campaign brochures? And then in the early ’80s, he shot to semistardom with that youthful Kennedy moxie? Somehow, over the last twenty years, he had now become…old. Father Time remains undefeated.

  Just listen to how he positioned himself: “I can stem the tide of this slide [in Iraq] and restore America’s leadership in the world and change our priorities,” he said on Good Morning America, outlining his case for the presidency. “I will argue that my experience and my track record, both on the foreign and the domestic side, put me in a position to be able do that.”

  America heard this and said, Meh. “Experience” was a flavor of ice cream that no one seemed to want. And “track record” just didn’t have any sex appeal. For all Biden’s years making cameos on the nightly news—Bork, Anita Hill, the Violence Against Women Act, Bosnia—he just couldn’t crack the mainstream conversation. “The bottom line is that no one in the country knows me,” he correctly said at the time. “They know Joe Biden if they watch Sunday morning shows or occasionally turn on C-SPAN. But absent that, they don’t know much about me at all.” The early polls had Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton way out in front, and then Biden polling under 5 percent.

  But he had time; it was a long campaign. He would show the world just who Joe Biden really was. Maybe he could make his case, perhaps, in an early interview with the New York Observer? A reporter asked him for his thoughts on Clinton and Edwards, so Biden spoke about them extensively, and critically. Almost as an afterthought, he added a few words on Obama. “I mean, you got the first mainstream African American, who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

  Sigh. This throwaway comment—intended as a compliment—was buried in the eleventh paragraph of the article. Yet it’s the only quote that mattered. Drudge Report called it a “Biden Shocker.” The New York Times called it “A Bumpy Rollout for Biden.” SEN. BIDEN STUMBLES OUT OF GATE IN ’08 RACE, declared the Wilmington News Journal, Biden’s hometown paper. Ezra Klein of The American Prospect said, “Bye Bye Biden.”

  People wanted to know: What the hell did “clean” and “articulate” mean? Was the implication that most African Americans were not clean and articulate? The next morning Biden told reporters that he was just referencing something his mom used to say: “Clean as a whistle, sharp as a tack.”

  That didn’t cut it. He made one of his first appearances on The Daily Show and took another shot at an explanation. “What I was attempting to be, and not very artfully, is complimentary,” he said. “The word that got me in trouble is using ‘clean.’ I should have said ‘fresh.’ ” (Okay, pause. While we’re at it, a sixty-five-year-old white man probably shouldn’t use the word “fresh.”) Poor Joe kept searching for a lifeline, telling Jon Stewart, “What I meant, was that he’s got new ideas.”

  Then Stewart lowered his voice to a whisper, giving Biden some advice that would have been useful thirty years ago: “When you are about to say one of those things, take a deep breath and count to ten.” The crowd laughed. Biden laughed.

  There was one person, at least, who seemed unruffled by Biden’s gaffe. “I didn’t take Senator Biden’s comments personally, but obviously they were historically inaccurate,” said Barack Obama. “African American presidential candidates like Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, and Al Sharpton gave a voice to many important issues through their campaigns, and no one would call them inarticulate.”

  Shake it off, Joe, shake it off. He pressed forward with the campaign. Maybe his luck would turn at the debates? But he started with a steep handicap, as the moderators gave Obama, Clinton, and Edwards the three plum positions on the stage and the bulk of the airtime.

  Yet he found a way to make his presence felt. George Stephanopoulos asked the candidates to name the most dangerous country in the world.

  “Iran,” said Obama.

  “Iran,” said Clinton.

  “Iran,” said Edwards.

  Then it was Biden’s turn. “Pakistan.”

  The room did a double-take. Wait, are you allowed to say Pakistan? As Kaufman explains the logic, “Well, if Iran is a real problem because they may have nuclear weapons, Pakistan is a problem because they already have nuclear weapons.” Plenty of national security experts agreed with him. (As recently as 2017, the former CIA station chief of Islamabad said, “With a failing economy, rampant terrorism, the fastest growing nuclear arsenal, the sixth largest population, and one of the highest birthrates in the world, Pakistan is of grave concern….It probably is the most dangerous country for the world.”)

  “The guts it took to say that!” said Kaufman. “The safe thing to say was Iran…And anybody who was thinking said, ‘You know, he’s right about Pakistan.’ And then they could tell that he was just saying what he believed.” Whether you agreed with him or not about Pakistan, people noticed.

  At least one person noticed: the junior senator from Illinois. “I absolutely think that the reason why Obama picked him for vice president was because of watching him on the Foreign Relations Committee, and going through the debates with him,” suggests Kaufman. “This is a guy who is very, very knowledgeable and also self-confident, not in a bang-your-chest way, but self-confident in that he’s willing to say what he believes in.” It wasn’t obvious at the time, but in a sense, Biden was rewarded for bucking the trend and just being himself.

  WISDOM OF JOE

  Stick to your guns.

  However, the average voter wasn’t sussing out the dangers of Pakistan versus the dangers of Iran. The average voter knew only one thing about Biden: He said things like “clean” and “articulate” and seemed a bit gaffey. It even came up in the debates. Brian Williams gingerly raised the issue of those misfires, saying that “words have gotten you in trouble in the past.” (Brian Williams said this. Pot? Meet kettle.) Williams asked Biden, given the famous loquaciousness, could he assure voters that he could control his mouth?

  “Yes,” said Biden.

  A pause.

  Yes, and…?

  That was it.

  That was all Biden would say. He smiled. The crowd got the joke, laughed, and it might have been Biden’s finest moment in either the ’88 or ’08 campaigns.

  Biden couldn’t nudge the polls, yet he stuck by his pledge to be “the best Biden I can be.” He campaigned his way, the Joe Biden way, bluntly and unafraid to dive into the weeds of policy. The critics began to nod in approval. Biden is “giving Iowa voters full paragraphs of context instead of sound bites, making issues seem clear rather than simple,” noted the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Thomas Fitzgerald. “He seems like a man liberated from the promise and tragedy of his past, serene in the shadows thrown by the star wattage of [Obama and Clinton]….It’s probably the last hurrah for his White House ambitions, and he’s enjoying the ride.”

  And up until the Iowa caucuses, Biden still thought he had a puncher’s chance. “My road to success is Iowa. It’s the only playing field left out there,” he reasoned. Maybe if he placed in the Top 3, he’d gain momentum and close the gap in New Hampshire.

  Then came Iowa.

  As we all know from the crack of lightning that changed the world, Obama won Iowa.

  Then Edwards. Then Clinton.

  Then…Bill Richardson.

  Joe Biden’s slice of the vote? One percent.

  The night of that death-knell, he stayed upbeat and he addressed his supporters, including many who had been on Team Biden for decades. Jill. Val. “Look, folks, there’s nothing to be sad abou
t tonight,” he told his crew, in a graceful withdrawal from the race. This is classic Joe. He had lost the election, yet he was the one cheering up the room.

  Soon he would face the questions. Would he take a consolation prize, like maybe secretary of state?

  “Absolutely, positively, unequivocally, Shermanesquely, no. I will not be anybody’s secretary of state in any circumstance I can think of,” Biden said.

  Okay, got it. Well, how about vice president?

  “And I absolutely can say, with certainty, I would not be anybody’s vice president, period.”

  For sure?

  “End of story. I guarantee I will not do it.”

  As the epic ’08 primaries marched forward, Biden and Obama began to speak more often. “He’d call not so much to ask for advice as to bounce things off me,” Biden said at the time.

  “If you win, I’ll do anything you ask me to,” Biden said to Obama.

  “Be careful, because I may ask you a lot,” said Obama. “The only question I have is not whether I want you in this administration,” Obama said, “it’s which job you’d like best.”

  Meanwhile, the Obama brain trust chewed over the best choice for VP. Theoretically, you could pick someone to help you win a state—like how Kennedy used LBJ to flip Texas—but that’s not what Obama had in mind. He had no appetite for electoral trickery. “I am more concerned and interested in how my selection may perform as an actual vice president than whether they will give a boost to the campaign,” Obama said.

  Obama’s short list came down to three conventional white dudes: Evan Bayh, Tim Kaine, and Joe Biden. (Hillary Clinton was considered, but as has been widely reported, Obama worried that “Bill may be too big a complication. If I picked her, my concern is that there would be more than two of us in the relationship.”) Evan Bayh and Tim Kaine were both safe, mainstream, unobjectionable choices, much like Diet Sprite. Yet they were not Joe Biden.