The FRONTLINE Interviews
Curtis Wilkie
Journalist
Curtis Wilkie served as a national and foreign correspondent for The Boston Globe for more than 25 years. As a journalist at The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware, Wilkie covered Joe Biden’s early political career.
The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Michael Kirk on June 18, 2020. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Biden’s Early Political Career
Joe comes to Wilmington, first as a lawyer, then as a county commissioner, and then as the youngest Senate candidate running at 29.What was Joe Biden’s aspect when you first met him, saw him, heard about him?Who was he in Wilmington in those days?
I met him very early because I was assigned to cover the New Castle County Council and he was a young councilman there.He was young, a little bit brash, very gregarious.He was easy to deal with and friendly.Not all of the members of the council particularly enjoyed dealing with journalists, but Joe was—he was quite easy to deal with.And his politics were probably mainstream national Democrat.But Delaware’s a very mixed state politically.They have a strong Republican Party impact.In Delaware, the Republican Party was probably more progressive than the Democratic Party in the state.That was certainly a rarity, but they had a very progressive governor at the time who was a Republican, and a progressive mayor of Wilmington itself.He was a very wealthy Republican whose family owned Abercrombie & Fitch.Delaware, of course, was pretty much controlled by the DuPont Company and the du Pont family interest.It was a one-industry town.
And Joe, if he’s a Democrat, was he a real Democrat, like a union Democrat?What kind of a Democrat was he?
He would fit very nicely into the national party more than the local party.He would have been to the left of the Democratic Party in Delaware at the time.It was essentially made up of a lot of conservatives downstate, and the people in the city tended to be your kind of typical, ethnic conservatives, like you’d see in a big city like Chicago or Philadelphia, New York.
For him to run when he’s 29, was he a man in a hurry?What was he doing?
Yeah, I think “audacious” is a good term to apply to Biden back then, and probably even now.I think we were all surprised when he declared against Cale Boggs for the Senate seat.This is a guy who wasn’t yet old enough to hold the seat, and Cale Boggs was a fixture in Delaware politics.He had held some kind of prominent office for longer than Joe Biden had been living.And—but it was a reflection of Biden’s audacity.He not only chose to run against him; I think he honestly felt he had a chance to beat him.
Did anybody else?
Not many.Probably members of his family.Beyond that, probably a few good friends.No, I don’t think anybody would have wagered much money on him back then.
Did he have a message, or was he selling Joe Biden?
I think he’s basically a new face.Boggs had been around for 30-odd years.And probably the great issue at that time nationally was Vietnam.I don’t remember Biden being a strong advocate either way on the war.I don’t think that was a big issue that drove him.I think he was clearly a young, fresh face.“It’s time for a change.”Cale Boggs was very much a downstate conservative Republican from a rural background.He was not a controversial figure, but he was a fairly popular old guy.He hadn’t done anything to ruffle feathers and I think easily enjoyed reelection for all the various offices he had held down through the years.I think everyone figured, well, he’ll be returned to office easily.
It’s a tough election year for Biden as a Democrat, too.It’s Nixon; it’s Nixon’s reelection.It’s against McGovern.
I don’t know what happened that year because it was McGovern at the top of the ticket.And yet in Delaware that year, you had something of an upheaval by Democrats, that you had a Democratic candidate unseated, a popular Republican governor.In the city of Wilmington, a young Democrat beat the Republican incumbent, and Biden beat a Republican incumbent.It was, things were topsy-turvy there.And of course, Nixon easily carried the state.Go figure.
Biden’s Civil Rights Perspective
For those of us from the outside, when we come to start to tell the biographical, political biography of somebody like Biden, and you dip into Delaware, and the story they want you to hear is that he could connect to the Black community, had a real strong civil rights perspective, made friends easily with people in that community and they voted overwhelmingly for him, is much of that true?
I wouldn’t dispute that.I think Joe was considered certainly pro-civil rights.And it was—I don’t think anything in his background would have been interpreted any other way.And if Joe represented suburbs and that was largely white, there certainly were Blacks in the city of Wilmington; that’s where most of the Blacks in Delaware lived.And I think that they would have—I’d have to go back and look, but I would think they would have supported him.But was he out marching in the street?No.But really nobody else was for civil rights at that time in the early ’70s.It was—real passions were, they involved Vietnam.
He’d been against busing, with the opponents of busing.Was that a controversial stance to take for a Democrat in Delaware at that time?
Busing came there, and it wasn’t terribly popular, but nothing like the problems that busing caused, say, in Boston two or three years later.It was just kind of a general dissatisfaction.People felt they had lost the neighborhood schools.But at the same time, it was the law of the land, and the law was going to be obeyed.And so not a lot of strong dissidence about it.It would have been an unpopular position to take, I think, if one had come out in strong support of busing.That would have been unpopular.
So how does he win, Curtis?Why does he win?
Good question.I was busy mostly covering the presidential campaign in ’72, and I think, if I recall, people became aware in the home stretch of that race, and it was going to be much closer than everyone thought.Joe was very energetic, and he had—I think generally the storyline is that it was a family operation.His sister, Valerie, ran the campaign, and other members of his family and close friends were the real players.But Biden brought in a couple of very clever political consultants from outside, both of them from the Boston area—John Marttila, who later became a very prominent national political consultant, and a young pollster named Pat Caddell, who kind of really earned his spurs that same year doing work for Sen. McGovern.
So Joe had some very good professional help, I think.He had some probably very good commercials that were helpful in that whole business of “Hey, I’m a fresh, new face, and it’s time for a change,” that sort of thing.
... [I’ve] always felt a little suspicious about how it all happened for him, and we were never hearing anything—he didn’t have a policy ride that he was staking.Other than that, he was a great retail politician and a backslapper and knew everybody’s name—
Oh, yeah, he’s your classic Irish politician, absolutely.
What does that mean to you, Curtis, “classic Irish politician”?
Oh, you know, somebody who “Hail fellow well met,” loves to connect with people, backslapper, you said it.He likes to lay hands on people, and of course that got him in trouble a couple of years ago when some women spoke up and said he—a little too touchy-feely.But it’s just naturally Biden.He’s the kind of guy who likes to put his arm around your shoulder and get close and talk.Joe still has a propensity to cuss, and most of it, to me, is fairly endearing, but some people take offense.I don’t know whether you remember that one time with Obama, they were sharing a mic and Joe thought he was whispering, sotto voce, to him, it’s “the big f---ing deal,” and it goes out to the country.That’s just classic Biden.That captured him right there.
What does it capture, do you think?What is that?
Oh, you know, he’s—Joe is—I think he’s a guy with not a lot of enemies.Maybe he’ll earn some this year, but I think most of the people, including most Republicans who would have dealt with him over the years, essentially they all like him.He’s kind of a good guy.He’s friendly.He’s smart.He’s charming.
Something that came out of the tragedy early in his life is—a characteristic that’s so important is Joe’s empathy with people.I think that is—that empathy and audacity are the two characteristics that I would really use to describe him.
Biden’s Family Tragedy
Tell me about the family.You said it was a family business.What are they like, the Bidens?
I really didn’t know Valerie or his brother Jim at all.I would have met them.I knew Joe, and I knew Neilia, his wife.And my sense is, it was a very tight family, very close.It was a very tight, closely knit family.If I recall, both his parents were still living.His dad, I think, had been a car salesman.And they were middle class, nothing pretentious about them, easy to deal with.I would have—I’m sure I would have talked to Valerie off and on, but not—never really fraternized with any of them.
The picture of Joe and Neilia, perfect couple, perfect family?Is it that kind of a situation?
They would have had that image.She would have been an asset.She was very pretty and quite intelligent and good company.Charming, easy to talk to.So was Valerie.I knew Neilia better than I knew Valerie, but they all had the same kind of friendly characteristics that I saw in Joe.
That car crash.Can you tell me about it?
Well, after Joe was elected, I was assigned to do a long, long piece on him, something like, “Young Mr. Biden Goes to Washington.”And that’s when I spent a good bit of time with Joe.I rode on the train with him to Washington one day he was there and checking out where his office was going to be, and he was very excited.I mean, he was almost like a little kid.And in fact, he was saying, “Hey, they’re all going to think I’m a page here.”And he was not yet then—I think he hadn’t turned 30 yet, and just bubbling with excitement, kind of on top of the world.
And I had lunch with Neilia in the course of doing this story, and we wound up talking mostly about [William] Faulkner.Turns out that she had written a thesis in college on Faulkner, and I had gone to the University of Mississippi and been exposed to Faulkner myself.And so we largely talked about that.And I just thought to myself, this couple really has everything.
And then, probably within a week of that lunch I had, the wreck took place.And it was just an incredible tragedy.And Neilia and the little girl were killed, and the two boys were badly injured.I don’t think Joe was ever young again after that.Just it was kind of—it just shattered all these thoughts of this nice, young couple and the life they were going to have.
I don’t think I ever wound up finishing that story I was working on.It just changed everything.And Joe, of course, said he felt he couldn’t serve in the Senate; he was not going to take the seat.And I believe it was Sen. Robert Byrd from West Virginia who was—who in the end was very persuasive with him.And Sen. Mansfield was the majority leader, and they were assuring Joe they would do everything to take care of him.And at that time, Joe was spending all this time at the hospital, the bedside of his two sons.And apparently they did persuade him to go.But as everyone knows, he didn’t make Washington his home.He commuted every day on the Amtrak train and came home at night to be with what was left of his family.
Somebody we talked to said Joe considered suicide during that time.
I’d never heard that.I mean, it had to be an incredibly crushing experience for him, but I wasn’t close to Joe.I never heard anything like that.I’m sure he despaired, but he had those two boys to live for.And that would surprise me.And Joe was fairly devout Catholic, too, and I think he probably fell back on his faith.And the members of that tight family held together for him.And he certainly had plenty of contemporaries who were close friends through there, and they all kind of bound together and got him through that, through the darkest part of that period.
Biden’s Early Senate Career
By not staying in Washington, by not hitting the party scene or whatever it is that happens in Washington, going out to dinner with lobbyists, maybe, how does that alter Joe Biden’s trajectory in the Senate and maybe his political career in the early days?
You know, Joe’s not a party animal anyway.He’s fun to be around, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t drink; I don’t think he ever drank.And he doesn’t run around on the side; he certainly has no reputation for anything like that.And I sense Joe was a kind of guy who would much rather have dinner with his wife and his family and his friends than with the lobbyists.
So many people in Washington are influenced by lobbyists.It’s not like lobbyists—it’s not a bad word.These are people who represent certain issues and are there to help educate the lawmakers and hopefully persuade them of their side.And I’m sure he listened to them, probably in his own office; he would listen to these people pitching one issue or another.But then he’d be selective in how he would determine it.He’s not the guy who would be wined and dined and persuaded over a nice dinner at wherever the haunts are today in Washington.Back then, it was the Rive Gauche and Sans Souci, and they no longer exist in Washington.
Of course, coming into the Senate, at that time the Senate is a much different place than it is now.It was a fraternity of philosopher kings in some ways, where even if you’re a Southern Dixiecrat, former segregationist, you cooperated, you worked.You were powerful, you were whatever, and that’s the way it worked.So young Joe going into that—
Go along and you get along, as they said.Certainly, I think there was a lot of that in his progress.It was—it is a club, but certainly, this is a 30-year-old guy joining a club where most of the people are a generation or more older than Biden is.So he’s at something of a disadvantage, aside from being a freshman, a very young freshman.You know, gradually he began to accrue some respect and power in the Senate.It was kind of a natural progression.
I mentioned Joe was audacious, but at the same time that wouldn’t be a characteristic that would necessarily work in the Senate with all the old bulls who ran it.I’m sure he had to be very deferential to them.He was smart enough to realize that and acted accordingly.
Biden’s 1987 Presidential Run
In ’87 he runs for president.The thing I can’t figure out is why he plagiarizes, or fails to credit, the Kinnock speech.Why is Joe Biden, who has a really good from-the-roots kind of story, family of coal miners, why does he need the Neil Kinnock speech to be driving his presentation and his résumé?Why does he need that?
Good question.I had just moved back to the States as that story was breaking.And I had breakfast one morning with Tom Oliphant, who was covering politics for the Globe ... and [he was] laughing about how Joe had omitted the reference to Kinnock out in Iowa a week or so before.And it was widely attended by other reporters, and no one had written about it.They all had noticed it, but nobody made a big deal of it because they knew he had repeatedly used this Kinnock story with attribution in the past.And suddenly this one time he didn’t attribute it to Kinnock.
And it goes as a non-story for a couple of weeks.1And then it turns out John Sasso gives Maureen [Dowd] the video.2And it’s plagiarism most foul.And Maureen does this story that led The New York Times.I remember I was walking down Mass. Ave. to go to Fenway Park and bought a copy of the Times that Saturday morning.And I said, what in the hell is this?I heard about this a week ago, and there had been any number of journalists who were there that didn’t think it was worthy of attention, this one slip-up.
1
New York Times: Biden's Debate Finale and Echo from Abroad
2
New York Times: Two Top Aides to Dukakis Resign As One Admits Role in Biden Tape
And it turns out to be the thing that drove the stake through the heart of the Biden campaign that year.
I like Maureen, I think she’s a terrific journalist, but I thought that story was badly handled.And I think you could find other people who felt the same way, that only way down in her story does she point out that Biden had used the same story before, repeatedly in the campaign, and always with attribution.It was buried in the story. ...I thought it was a bulls--- story.I still do.But it croaked Biden.
Croaked him?I’ll say!And he didn’t just quit.But he then says, “I plagiarized—when I was in law school, some of my stuff was, I didn’t footnote things.There were a lot of other things.I have sinned before.”
Yeah, that all came out afterwards.Everybody pounced on it.Joe had apparently inflated his academic credentials.And all that is—the whole issue metastasized very quickly.
Why?
You’ve seen it repeatedly.You get politicians who are wounded by one particular misstep, and things have a way of deteriorating.And that’s what happened with Biden.It’s what’s happened with any number of political figures, whether it’s a Gary Hart or altogether a different kind of issue.But these things come back and bite you.And people then either start volunteering, people dropping the dime on a candidate they knew and were reluctant to pass on information, suddenly people saying, “Oh, this is not the first time Biden’s done this.”It’s kind of the way it works.That’s the way it worked with him that time.
Obama Selects Biden as his Running Mate
A lot of politicians, it would have flushed them.But by 2008, he’s back; he wants to go to the dance one more time.And out in Iowa ... the gaffe about Obama is uttered.3
3
Time: A Dubious Compliment
“Clean,” or whatever.Yeah, that’s Biden, and was not helpful.But, you know, that’s Biden.
Were you surprised Obama picked him as his vice president?
Not really.I thought he was probably a good choice for him because of his experience in the Senate.And not that Delaware was going to bring a hell of a lot of electoral votes, but Joe provided some gravitas to it, by this time in his life.And he was probably going to be somebody very compatible with Obama.He proved to be.He proved to be, I thought.It was a relationship that fit.It was something that I watched from afar.I was by that time retired and totally out of it, but my sense is it worked.
Biden as National Grief Counselor
And his empathy, as you call it, becomes critical, because he ends up going into the things Obama doesn’t feel like he can do—racial problems, mass shootings.Joe, like any vice president, he goes to the funerals, but he stays, and he’s the grief counselor in chief in lots of ways, especially in the Black world.
I don’t know Biden well, and I haven’t seen much of him in recent years.Actually, I don’t think I’ve seen Joe since before he became vice president.But talking about that empathy, I know of several cases myself of individuals I know that either were very ill or bereaved, that Biden personally would go to see, in some cases would fly to see them, to sit by their bedside.And nobody ever publicized this.He didn’t seek publicity for it.But he did it because that, again, that’s Biden.
Once you have a big grief moment, that’s sort of an existential moment for you, you have this, and you just feel the urgent need to do it personally?
Something drives him to do it, and I think it’s one of the finer characteristics a person could have, to be able to try to comfort someone who is grieving or seriously ill.He relates to people, and I think that’s an important characteristic.
Just backing up, the last time I saw him, he came to Oxford [Mississippi], where I live now, and it was in connection with his book in 2007, which was, of course, in connection with his prospective campaign again in 2008.And because he was in Oxford, he talked about his wife Neilia’s fondness for Faulkner.And after he had finished at this book signing I talked to him a bit, and I said to him then, I said, “Joe, you mentioned Neilia and Faulkner, and I remember a lunch I had with her that we spent much of the time talking about Faulkner.”And Joe got very weepy—and this was more than 40 years after her death—in recalling her and remembering her.Again, to see that emotion in this guy who’s trying to make it in the hurly-burly world of politics, it’s something very nice to see somebody with that kind of emotion.
And that it’s that close to the surface.
Even though maybe it doesn’t look real manly to shed a tear or something, I suspect Joe’s the kind of person that can be moved to tears pretty easily by certain things.He didn’t actually cry that time, but he—his eyes glistened.And it was close to tearing up.
Biden’s 2020 Presidential Run
When you talk about the luck of the Irish, he runs for president in the year when the economy was super high-flying and it looked like Trump was going to walk in a repeat.And then it all starts to collapse for Trump.And there’s Joe in the basement.Maybe that’s where he—
We’ve certainly had bad luck, so maybe it’s time for the luck of the Irish this time.Who knows what happens between now and November?Again, things can change dramatically.Again, Joe can say something that damages him, again.But I think right now, just let Trump stew in the juice that he keeps spewing out.And it’s just a drastic decline.It’s obviously speeded on by coronavirus, but Trump didn’t create that, but Trump’s the guy creating his own problem for himself with just the way he behaves.
The added advantage for Biden is, given the situation, he’s not able to get out in the public and be as vocal as he normally would.And therefore maybe he’s going to stay out of some of the trouble he’s caused himself previously.Things may have a way of finally working out for him.
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