international relations before moving on to the vice-presidency and the presidency.
During his tenure, Biden suffered multiple tragedies not of his own doing. His wife and daughter died in an automobile accident just
prior to him being installed as a Senator (leaving him to travel home each day from Washington to care for his surviving sons); and
later, his eldest son Beau died of cancer. These events did not embitter or weaken him but instead strengthened him: he remarried, supported his second wife’s desire to acquire advance degrees and teach, and caused him to commit to finding a cure for cancer.
He also made several mistakes, each of which is illustrative: when accused of plagiarism during his 1996 run for the presidency, he apologized and resigned; when he withheld information about Clarence Thomas during his nomination to the court, harming Anita Hill and others, he later apologized, and became the first president to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court; when he was accused of sexual assault by several women for
inappropriate touching and what seemed to be unwanted advances, he again apologized, moving forward to modify his personal behavior and to pass the Violence Against Women Act; upon reflection, when facts revealed provisions regarding crack cocaine resulted in mass incarcerations, he called his involvement in the passage of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act “a mistake.”
Biden also worked to improve the benefit and position of others, not of himself: he worked with Obama to pass the stimulus bill to reboot the economy after the 2008 crash (not realizing any personal gain), he again worked with Obama to pass the Dreamers Act to provide access to and protection for college students born to Mexican immigrants. He put his personal desire to be president aside in 2016
after the death of his son Beau, relinquishing his frontrunner status to Hillary Clinton (who lost the election to Trump), believing it was not
in the public or party interest to run unless he
could commit himself 100 percent; he did not demean his son, Hunter, for political expediency when Hunter became an admitted and convicted drug addict, instead supporting him and encouraging others to get help; he stood as the sole voice questioning the raid to kill Bin Laden, not because he did not want to see Bin Laden held accountable, but because he worried a failed mission would harm Obama’s standing (thus not throwing a running
mate under the bus, as did Trump with Mike Pence); and, he was consistently recognized as being one of the “least-wealthiest” persons in the U.S. Senate during his tenure (he only started making some serious money once he published his memoir).
Deciding it was time to run for the presidency in 2020, after coming to terms with Beau’s death and the promise he made to Beau that he would run for president, Biden ran on a platform of common decency and the promise of reuniting a country divided and disillusioned after Trump. Once elected, he stood up to authoritarian leaders around the world (Putin,
Kim, Orbán); he reinstated many of the international agreements that Trump had overturned (for example, the Paris Accord) to ensure national security and increase economic
Trump is a man who continues to live in darkness of the cave, using his personal knowledge to harm those who did not possess such knowledge and whom he did not regard as his equals.
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