The FRONTLINE Interviews
Dan Balz
Political Correspondent, The Washington Post
Dan Balz is chief correspondent covering politics at The Washington Post and is the author of several books, including Collision 2012: The Future of Election Politics in a Divided America.
Following are two interviews conducted by FRONTLINE’s Jim Gilmore and Michael Kirk on November 24, 2020, and June 15, 2020, respectively. They have been edited for clarity and length.
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LATEST INTERVIEW: What Biden Has Learned
So, Dan, the film is all about crises, as you know, that Biden went through.We go through his grief, mistakes that he made, campaigns that fell apart on him.The question for you now is, what has he learned over all those years?By 2020, who is he, and why is he again running in 2020?
He's running in 2020 because he's always wanted to be president.That's the starting point.He's tried before, twice, unsuccessfully.But he's wanted to be president his entire adult life, ever since he got into the Senate.But I think that 2020 was defining for him.And the reason he ran is for a couple reasons.One, which he has spoken about, was the Charlottesville white supremacist rally and clash and, ultimately, the killing of a person in that moment.And that said to him that Donald Trump was—I would guess what I would say is that said to him that Donald Trump was even worse for the country than he had thought before.So that was, in some ways, a kind of a moral imperative for him to run.
But there's a second reason that I think triggered his decision, and that was that when he campaigned around the country in 2018 for a lot of congressional and senatorial and gubernatorial candidates, he came to the conclusion that, despite what everything was saying about how far left the party had moved, that it had not moved that far left, that the people who were winning and likely to win were more moderate candidates.And it gave him a sense that he knew, in a sense, better than the experts where the party was at that point.He had a sense of what it would take in terms of messaging to try to defeat Donald Trump.And he concluded from all of that that he was the best positioned candidate to be able to do that, of all of the people who were thinking about running.
And from all of the mistakes and all of the other battles that he had fought over those many years, what had he learned, and who was he at that moment?
Well, he was a more mature Joe Biden than he had been earlier in his life.I mean, this is a person who had suffered significant setbacks, both personally and politically.And out of that I think he had come to a sense of what his strengths and weaknesses really were.So he had internalized those, and I think that he has a better sense of his own political instincts than people may give him credit for.And he had the confidence at that point to be able to go forward.
Why a Divided Nation Chose Biden
Early on in the campaign, certainly in the primaries, he showed his weaknesses; he did badly in Iowa and in New Hampshire.He looked discombobulated when [Kamala] Harris went after him in the first debate.How did those weaknesses, showing his weaknesses or whatever, become strengths, that this man was seen by the population as offering something that they needed, a divided country in crisis? …
Well, this was a nominating process that revolved around one central question, and that was, who was the best Democrat who would have the best chance to defeat Donald Trump?There were a lot of other issues, obviously, involved in different candidacies, but that was the central issue for most voters.And I think that Biden had the confidence that he had set his course in the right direction and was willing to stick with it, even though there were times when he did not look like an effective candidate.He lacked energy often.He wasn't as crisp as a lot of people had hoped he would be.Those weaknesses were evident all through 2019 and certainly in the first couple of events of 2020.And yet Biden and his team, I believe, felt that this was a contest that was likely to go on for some time, and they were not going to be deterred by early setbacks.They felt that as this went along, that the party ultimately would turn to him.
And what did America see in him?Why Joe Biden?Why finally Joe Biden?
Well, I think in the end, people—the Democrats who nominated him saw him as the most effective candidate to defeat Donald Trump.And in the general election, again, because this was a referendum on Donald Trump more than anything else, almost 80 million people concluded that they wanted Donald Trump out of office and Joe Biden in office.
One thing we know is that many of the people who supported Joe Biden were voting for him not because it was an affirmative vote for Joe Biden, but because they were voting against Donald Trump.And that was, in a sense, one of the great strengths that Joe Biden had in this election, that he became the vehicle for the wishes and the determination and the desires of people who wanted Donald Trump out of office.
Did his campaign all along understand that this was a referendum on Donald Trump?
Yes.They, you know, his opening video, which highlighted Charlottesville, was an indication of how he and his team saw the race, which was a battle for the soul of the nation.And that was not even code; that was an explicit message, saying, Donald Trump is bad for the soul of the nation and that Joe Biden would help to restore that; that he was the kind of candidate who could bring America back to, if not the past, but to something in a more a settled way, to something that approaches normality, which had not existed during the Trump presidency.
Biden’s Win as a Personal Triumph
After the election, on that Saturday when the networks finally named Biden as the winner, he goes up on the stage for his first speech.What does that mean to Joe Biden, after all these years, that victory is finally in his hands?
Well, it was a moment of affirmation of all of the work and effort and campaigning that he had done over many, many years, not just in 2020.But it was also a moment of relief that finally he had reached this goal; finally he had the opportunity to do what he claimed he wanted to do.I mean, that speech was focused almost entirely on healing the country, on bringing people together, on trying to find a way to work across the huge divides that still exist in this country.And that has been genuine in Biden's message throughout the campaign.And this was the moment, as the person who was projected to be the winner, for him to be able to say that in the most explicit way possible.
Biden’s Political Evolution
I want to ask you two history questions, and then we'll move forward to what the election meant.For the film, after the car crash back in '72, there's 14 years later after that car crash, he's running for president.So if you can summarize for us what that 14 years—what happened to Joe Biden, how he evolved in the Senate to get to a point where, 14 years after not even knowing if he could do the job and whether he would pull out—he would not take the Senate seat because of the tragedy he had gone through—to a point where he was ready to take over the leadership of the party and become the president of the United States.
Well, by the time he decided to run in 1988, he had been thinking about this for a long time.I mean, his ambitions were never even thinly disguised.He talked about it not long after he came to the Senate in interviews with people and made clear that being in the Senate itself was not the only thing he might want to do in life, and that he had the desire—the confidence, if you will, and almost the cockiness of a young, aspiring politician.And I think that people saw in him somebody who was a potential future leader of the Democratic Party.
So it was finally time in 1988 for him to be able to do that.He was of an age where he could do it.He had enough experience in the Senate that he could do it.And it was something that, in a sense, was pent up in him, and finally the moment arrived for him to try to do it.
And how had he evolved, though, so that in '87 he's running for the '88 presidency?How had he evolved in those 14 years?Was there something you saw in him?Yes, he had the drive all the way through, but he also became a man of the Senate, I guess, within those years.Anything you can add to that?
Well, you know, he was a person of the Senate.I mean, that was part of his DNA. But it was also somebody who was, in a sense, waiting his turn, waiting his time.He was not going to run in 1980 because, you know, Teddy Kennedy was running in 1980 against Jimmy Carter.I mean, that was not a time that he was going to do it, even if he had the ambition to do it.He was not ready to do it in 1984.There were others with more experience, and certainly Walter Mondale was the odds-on favorite.He waited until a moment in which there was an open primary, an opportunity in which he would be able to match himself against others who didn't necessarily have, you know, the inside track or the pole position.
And so it was a combination of having become comfortable in the Senate but never giving up on the ambition of wanting to piggyback on that and become president of the United States.
After the '87 humiliation, or however you define it, and falling out, how does he continue to persevere? ...
Well, after the debacle, if you will, of 1988 campaign, in which he's forced to withdraw long before 1988 ever arrives, he has positions in the Senate that give him power and clout and, in a sense, a national platform from which to continue to kind of project himself as a leader of the Democratic Party.It's not clear at that point what he thought about when his next opportunity might arise to run for president, but he knew that he had positions, whether it was on the Judiciary Committee or the Foreign Relations Committee, that he would be a central player in many of the most important debates that were going on in the country.
And so, it wasn't as though, having lost in 1988, he, you know, he had faded away or disappeared.He had prominence and standing after 1988 to continue to march forward.
What did he learn from these failures, the losses, '87, 2007, the chance to possibly run in 2016, which he did not do?What did he learn that he brought to bear in this election?
I guess what you would say is he learned to be patient, and he learned never to give up, which is—which in many ways is the most important attribute that he brought to the 2020 election; that this is a person who had been knocked down a number of times, who passed up an opportunity in 2016, which many people thought might have been a better moment for him, even though Hillary Clinton was certainly the favorite to win the nomination.But he was not ready in 2016 to do it.Many people thought that by 2020, he would see himself as too old to run again.But Joe Biden never did see himself in that way, and I think that that sense of patience and perseverance were the things he learned, that there can be rewards for continuing to make the fight.
The COVID-19 Pandemic
In an age of COVID-19, what in life prepared him for this moment, what in his experiences he draws from, so that in this era of crises, especially with COVID, he was able to show that he was the right man?
I think the most important attribute that he was able to show was that he had experience through a lifetime in public service to be able to marshal the forces and to project to people that he was going to be able to do that, to deal with something as large and as terrible as the pandemic.He had worked through in his lifetime of government with so many people that he knew that if he became president—or he believed, certainly—that he would be able to assemble a team that could do that.And that was one of the things he projected.And he used the experience of the pandemic to draw a very sharp contrast with President Trump in the kind of leadership style he wanted to offer, as opposed to what President Trump was offering.
The First Debate
Joe Biden, the man, is always seen as a campaigner, the guy who's patting people on the back, remembering somebody in the crowd's wife's name and sort of being close.It's personal politics, but that became impossible because of COVID. How did that affect his campaign? …
Well, when the campaign was forced to shut down in early March and go virtual, as most of the country had to do, they made a couple of important decisions.One was that they had to protect Joe Biden from the virus, that there was, in a sense, no more—no higher priority than making sure he stayed healthy, and that required him to stay in his home in Wilmington at a time when many people are criticizing him, not least of which was President Trump and his team, but also many Democrats who were worried that his relative invisibility could be costly in a general election, and that the campaign team and the candidate himself were being bombarded, in a sense, by people saying, "You have to rethink this; you have to consider getting out in a more active way."But they had two conclusions.One, obviously, was, again, the issue of his personal health and safety, but I think they judged in those early days, you know, the kind of March-April and even May period, that most Americans were not thinking about the campaign as much as they were thinking about the pandemic, and that they were not looking for politicians to come knocking on their door in any way, shape or form; that they wanted to figure out how to get through the pandemic themselves.And so the Biden team believed that this was not going to be as costly as some people thought it might be.
The first debate: your thoughts on it.Surprising?… You look back at that debate, and what do you see in Biden and, again, something he learned from his past in how he and the campaign decided to deal with Donald Trump?
Well, it was a combination of pushing back when it seemed appropriate to push back but also being restrained when it seemed like that was the better course of action, again, to draw a contrast with the president.I mean, anybody who saw that debate could see that the president had come in with a determination to be as disruptive as he possibly could, to basically ignore the rules, to interrupt as often as possible, and in one way or another to try to, in a sense, bully Joe Biden through the course of the debate.And there were times when Biden was clearly exasperated by that and fired back at him, particularly in that moment when he said, "Will you shut up?"But he also had always wanted to project a different kind of leadership model or role, and that was part of it as well, to try to turn the other cheek, if you will, and at times turn directly to the camera to speak to the American people as opposed to getting into a, you know, a back-and-forth with Donald Trump at every opportunity.
How smart a strategy was that?
Well, I think it was a very smart strategy.I mean, it may have been the only strategy he could adopt.They were certainly prepared for some of what Donald Trump threw at them—perhaps not fully prepared for just how aggressive the president was intending to be.But it was a smart strategy.I mean, in the end, this was something that was judged to be a very damaging moment for the president and a pretty good moment for Joe Biden, even though there were times when he kind of lost his temper as well.
Biden’s Support Among Black Voters
… So when looking at the victory, the final victory, how much was this due to the Black vote, and how much of it was due to holding that blue wall?What was important?What was accomplished, and how do you view the reasons for the victory?
Well, the Black vote was foundational.The Black vote was essential.The Black vote was the first building block for his candidacy, both in the nomination process and ultimately in winning the presidency.But he had to go beyond that, and part of it was to mobilize the suburbs and white voters in the suburbs, and part of it was to win back some of the blue-collar workers in those upper Midwestern states that had gone for Trump in 2016 and that Biden knew he wanted to win back.Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were always the critical path to the presidency that the Biden team saw when they laid out their fall strategy.Certainly they wanted to expand the map, and there were opportunities to do that, but they always believed that winning those three states was the key to winning the presidency, and that required him to speak in ways that reached beyond the Black community, into the white community, and into different parts of the white community.
Biden Inherits a Divided Country
… At the end of the election, we've still got a little less than half of America who rejected him, and many of them, 70% or whatever, Republicans who [are] denying the fact that he was actually legally elected.So here we are with him setting up for taking on the presidency, but when he walks in the door, isn't the hard part just beginning?
Yes, the hard part is just beginning.You know, this election showed, again, how divided America is, and how—not just that it's divided, but very deeply divided, and that there is great animosity [on] one side versus the other.Joe Biden got, you know, nearly 80 million votes, but Donald Trump got nearly 74 million votes.Extraordinary numbers.I mean, the turnout on both sides gives you an indication of the passions of this election.And so in winning the presidency, Joe Biden becomes a figure who will try to heal and bring together a country that may not be ready to be brought together.And I think some of that will rest on how President Trump acts as a former president; some of it will obviously depend on how Republicans, particularly in the Senate, greet Joe Biden as the new president.But he's got a monumental task ahead as he tries to move forward.Because of the closeness of the outcome in the House and the Senate, he will not have majorities to make it easy for him to get through his priorities.We don't know what the Senate is going to look like, at this point, because of those Georgia races, but it's possible that he will have a Senate in Republican hands.This is going to require him to make compromises.He's a person who says he's willing to do that, to make deals, but he's also got a Democratic Party that is divided about how ambitious and how aggressive to be, in terms of its policy proposals and priorities.
And so he has to navigate all of this at a moment when the country still is not ready necessarily to settle down.
You've covered politics for a long time.Have you ever seen a president come into office with the challenges that Joe Biden is going to have to deal with?And if not, how up for the challenge is he?
I don't think any president, certainly in my lifetime, has faced the problems that Joe Biden will face as the new president: the pandemic; a weakened economy; the racial issues that are on the table; the disparities in health care; the challenge of climate change.All of these are enormously difficult problems under the best of circumstances.Even if the country were relatively united, these are big challenges to take on.To do it when the country is as divided as it is will test every, every bit of what Joe Biden has learned over nearly 50 years in public office; that the leadership qualities that he is going to have to exercise are ones that he's going to have to reach deep inside himself in order to be successful.
The fact that the president will not concede the election, the walls that he's been putting up to Joe Biden, can you talk a little bit about what the strategy has been for the Biden people to deal with this unusual task that they have before them and how successful it's been?
The Biden team has approached the post-election period the way they approached the pre-election period, which is to focus on what they are able to do and to try to, as much as possible, not get into a mudslinging or mud-wrestling match with the president of the United States; in other words, not to react or respond to everything that Donald Trump says or does.Biden has focused on putting a government together and putting a White House staff together and trying to set out his own legislative packages and agendas so that when he's president, he will be able to hit the ground running as best as possible.But the background music in all of this is Donald Trump.And he is, as always, unpredictable, disruptive, and we don't know exactly how he's going to operate as a former president.There are many people who believe that, in one way or another, as the titular head of the Republican Party, as the strongest voice within the Republican Party, that he will stay active and he will be a thorn in the side of the new president.And that's part of the reality that Joe Biden is going to have to deal with as president.At a point—I mean, up to a point you can ignore it, but there may be moments when you have to push back on it in a more significant way than he's been able to do so far.
In a divided America that you've helped define so well, does Joe Biden understand the nature of the opposition that he has to deal with?
I think that's a big question.I think at a superficial level, yes, he understands how divided America is, but I think he has in his own mind that he is the kind of person who may be able to help to move the country off of that situation, off of those conditions.It is—you know, it may be wishful thinking on his part.It may be that he imagines a Senate that doesn't exist anymore.I mean, he certainly says he recognizes that this is a different Senate and a different Congress than he grew up in, but we'll have to see once he's in office, as he tests that, whether he is right or wrong about that.And the degree to which he is overestimating his ability to kind of overcome those, that's when the moment of truth will come in the Biden presidency.
Biden’s Staying Power
And lastly, Dan, we've kind of gone over this territory, but one more time.So Biden spent his entire life with the goal of winning the presidency.What have we learned from him going through this election period again, and what we know about the past and what it says about his ability to deal with those challenges, deal with what's to come, more so the fact of what he's learned from his past—what does he have in his toolbox from all of this that sort of will help us to understand what he can accomplish?
I guess I would say what he believes is that he has the right temperament and the right personality and the right set of experiences to be able to overcome the challenges that he's going to have to confront when he becomes president.It is a sense that he is a politician who knows how to work the system at a time when the system is badly in need of somebody who knows how to work it.Now, we don't know whether the system is so broken, whether the country is so divided that that will be impossible, or that it will be so difficult to do that progress will be very, very limited, and that we will be in another two- or four-year war between Democrats and Republicans, between the Trumpworld and the non-Trumpworld.That's the, you know, big question that surrounds Biden's presidency.But in Joe Biden, I think you have a president who believes he's the man for the moment, if you will, to be able to get the country moving in the direction that he wants to take it.
And what does it say about Americans that they thought he was the guy, the man of the moment?
I think the election said that a majority of Americans did not want another four years of Donald Trump and that they wanted somebody like Biden, or an alternative, to be able to pick up the pieces and try to put them back together.This was more a rejection of Donald Trump than it necessarily was an affirmation of the Democratic Party agenda or the Democratic Party message.This was a personal victory for Joe Biden, but beyond that, given what we can see in the election results, it was not an overwhelming mandate.This was not the broad repudiation of Donald Trump that some Democrats were certainly hoping for.And that's the reality that Joe Biden is going to have to confront and live with as president.
ORIGINAL INTERVIEW: Biden’s Early Political Career
So it’s 1968.Joe Biden is in Wilmington with politics in mind, I take it.Civil rights struggle is happening all around him, and so is Vietnam.Help me with the politics of the time, and maybe Joe Biden’s place in it, as he thinks about a political future, what would be necessary for him to know about and what would be influencing him.
Well, 1968 is the most tumultuous year of our politics, probably until today, with the assassinations, and the Vietnam protests, and obviously the Chicago Democratic convention.If you are a young Joe Biden, you are being swept up in all of that.And if you are thinking about a political career, particularly in a place like Delaware, which is Southern in many ways, you are having to deal with the local politics that you would encounter if you were planning to run for office, as well as the larger national politics, which as a younger person, you would be—you would be, again, swept up in.
It’s clear that the civil rights movement, writ large, had a real impact on him.I can’t say to what extent Vietnam did, but certainly the civil rights movement did, because there was foment all around him.And having talked to him about that period a little bit much later in his life, it’s just very clear that that was, in many ways, the shaping experience of his early political thinking.
And what was his early political—in what way did it shape him?What was his perspective from that time?
Well, I think his perspective was that Delaware was Southern in its attitudes on race and that he wanted to be a part of trying to change that, that he was drawn to the aspirations of the civil rights movement and recognized that the state he was in was in a different place, and that the Democratic Party needed to be reformed in whatever way he was able to do that, whether it was through other organization or through running for office himself.But I think his view was that Delaware was not where it needed to be, in terms of the politics of the state on civil rights, and he wanted to be active, or he wanted to contribute to that.
… Biden was not—he didn’t join the civil rights movement.As far as I could tell, he didn’t let his hair grow and wear tie-dyed shirts and join the antiwar movement.He was standing back a little bit through all of this, in terms of—as you say, he was probably very interested in the civil rights movement as a political event but not as a kind of personal dedication from Joe into those events.
Well, I suspect that part of the reason for that, and I’m only speculating on this, but part of the reason for that is, if you have in mind a future political career, there is a balancing act that you are going through in that period.It is far easier if politics, in terms of elective office, is not in the back of your mind or the front of your mind, to engage more directly in some of the activities of the civil rights movement.It’s more difficult if you are thinking of running for office, to decide exactly where to intersect with the civil rights movement in an activist way.So that may be part of the reason that he stood a little bit to the side, even though it’s clear he was influenced by it.
Biden’s First Senate Run
When he decides to run for the Senate at 29 years old, it’s an audacious act?
Sure.Anybody who isn’t of age, it’s an audacious act.But Joe Biden has always had that kind of audacious streak in him.I mean, he has always had political ambition and, I would say, a healthy sense of his own value that he could add.And I think that somebody at age 29, why not run for the Senate?Why not start big rather than starting small?You’re often told, at that age, well, you should run for city council, or you should run for state legislature, something like that.But for Biden, particularly in a relatively small state, or quite a small state, the idea of going big is probably much more attractive, particularly if you’re not sure you’re going to be able to win it.It’s easier to go big and lose than to go small and perhaps lose in that race.So why not?
So he runs against six-term, I think, Sen. [J. Caleb] Boggs.Seems to be a shoo-in.Got a lock on the seat.What does Biden run on?What’s the big idea Joe Biden brings to that race?
Well, I think the big idea in that race is future and change: future versus past, change versus status quo.It’s the classic kind of campaign that anybody in Joe Biden’s situation would run against somebody who had been in office as long as his opponent had been.So beyond that, I don’t think that there was necessarily an overarching issue that was the key to it.But I think it’s that future versus past.
Biden’s Family Tragedy
Tragedy strikes.We don’t need to go into the details of that.We have others who can tell us about that.But from a political perspective, the thing that’s been fascinating to learn is the way that Biden, the young Biden, who he has to wait for his birthday to be sworn in, shows up in this institution and says: “I don’t think I should be here.I’m going to go home.”And the way the story goes, he’s invited to stay for six months, convinced to do it by old-timers, some of them segregationists, some of them people who nowadays don’t look so savory, but at the time were senior members of the United States Senate.Can you set up the environment that young Joe Biden would have gone into, in that body, as a 30-year-old recent widower, and how he would have grown up inside that place?
Well, his life had been completely shattered by the auto accident.And so here is a person who is grieving deeply over the loss of his wife and child, two sons who were hurt.The Senate, in those days, particularly the Democratic Party in the Senate, was a combination of Northern liberals and Southern segregationists.But we also know that the Senate has always been a club and that senators took care of one another, and particularly if you are somebody who just turned 30, you’re barely eligible to be in the Senate, and you are now surrounded by people who have been there for many, many, many years.
It’s less the views that they have on particular issues, particularly the race issue, and more on kind of the comfort that they tried to provide Joe Biden at a moment that they all recognized that his life is at a very, very critical moment.And I think that the motivation on those who were urging him to stay was that, in the long run, this would help him get through this period rather than if he were to withdraw and kind of return to Delaware and a very uncertain life, given what he was going through.And so I think that that was the environment that he was in.
He’s part of an early youth movement.After Watergate, there will, of course, be a flood of new people in the Congress.And being part of the new youth movement, as some people have told us, what does it mean?
Well, the youth movement that Joe Biden represented, I think you’re right.I think it’s after Watergate, this takes on critical mass.From 1972 to 1976, Biden’s first four years in the Senate, the youth movement is mostly outside of Washington and outside of the Congress.It is something that is happening elsewhere.And Biden is part of that generation.But in some ways he’s slightly beyond it.He’s a few years enough older than what’s going on, in terms of protests around the country, and the McGovern—the McGovern troops, and all of that, that he is—he’s not quite part of it.
And so I think he’s probably learning to be a senator more than trying to lead a youth movement.And I think that reflects kind of the personality of Biden, which has always been to try to become part of the institution of which he is a part, and to make himself a valuable member of that, rather than being a rebel within it.
Biden’s Early Senate Years
So for about 15 years—we’re going to lead up to 1987, and when Biden makes his first try at the presidency, do you have a sense of what Biden was known for in the United States Senate?What was his thing?What were his politics?Anything that you—it’s a funny thing.I ask people.I go back.We look really hard.It’s pretty hard to find his fingerprints on a specific way that you can do it.Where is Biden in those years?
I’m glad to hear you guys have struggled with that as well, because I can’t think of an identifiable issue or cause with which I would associate Biden in that period.I think what we knew about Biden—and I, frankly, first really became much aware of him, was in the ’80s, rather than in the ’70s.I didn’t cover Congress in the ’70s to speak of.But I think that the Biden of that period was somebody who was known for oratory, and I don’t say that in a negative way.I mean a speaking ability, and a desire to speak out about things without it being identified with a particular cause.
And so he was, in a sense, a rising member of the Senate, and obviously still was a younger member of the Senate, but not one who had the kind of power that gave him the ability to really move issues.And so instead, he did it as becoming an institutionalist on the one hand and becoming an orator on the other.
Biden’s 1987 Presidential Run
He runs in ’87 for the presidency. ... What platform is he running on?What ideas are animating his candidacy in ’87, other than he’s been there 14, 15 years, and maybe it’s time to run?
Well, again, there is kind of a change argument that he’s bringing to it.Again, he’s in his 40s.It’s an argument for generational change.In the way that he is attacked in 2019 by some of his rivals for being of a generation that needs to move on, part of the argument that he is making in 1987 is that he represents a new generation, a generation whose time has come to be able to lead the country, not just to be active in the Senate.And so that’s part of what he’s doing.
So this Neil Kinnock, this plagiarism moment happens.Can you describe the circumstances and the political effect of that on Biden’s candidacy?
Well, Neil Kinnock was a British Labor politician and a great orator, who talked about himself and his background coming up from the mines, or his family coming up from the mines in Wales, and how he had pushed forward as a politician to go beyond where the family had been, and kind of, if you will, a British version of an American dream kind of story.Biden was attracted to that for several reasons.One is, Biden admired the oratory of Neil Kinnock.And secondly, Biden could put himself into the Neil Kinnock story: family in Scranton, Pennsylvania; family in the mines.
And so, in a sense, he absorbed the Kinnock story and began to parrot it back in some of his speeches.Very often he did it with attribution and made reference to Kinnock.But a number of times, he did not.He made it sound as though the words that were coming from his mouth were his own words, and literally his own story, when if you looked at a—a video of Neil Kinnock giving a speech, what you could see was that Biden was literally lifting the Kinnock speech and making it his own.
How does it get released?How is it discovered that he copied the Kinnock speech?
John Sasso, who was the campaign manager for Michael Dukakis, as I recall, sent a videotape to Maureen Dowd of <i>The New York Times</i>, and she wrote the story about it, compared the two, and that then erupted.It erupted in the way that we’re now used to seeing things go viral.We didn’t know that phrase back then, but literally that went viral.And Biden was put completely on the defensive, and was unable, frankly, to weather it.He tried to explain it away.He tried to explain that most often, he did use attribution.But the evidence was so powerful, that he had literally lifted it, that he had plagiarized it, that he was not able to get out from under it.
The impact on Biden?How did he personally handle it?
Well, I mean, in the end, he recognized reality, and he recognized that this was a fatal blow to his hopes of winning the nomination in 1988, and so he decided to just fold the campaign.I think it was a very painful decision, and it took him and his advisers some amount of time to reach that decision.But I think that they all recognized that, given what had happened, there was no way forward for him.And there was another thing that had come up in that period, which was something having to do with when he was in college.
So the weight of it was just so great.And again, coming after what had happened to Gary Hart, there was—there was a new environment in which politicians were being held to a much tighter set of standards and much tougher scrutiny.And so what a politician previously might have been able to weather, you could not do that in 1987.And so he was—he was forced out.And I think that he recognized that he was going to have to go back and rebuild his political career as a result.
He does try to rebuild it.He redoubles his effort as the chairman of the [Judiciary] Committee against Bork.Some people have said he decides to use Bork and really prove his mettle, his value to the Senate, all of that as the chairman of that committee on national television, and that that was the great impact of Joe Biden as part of the rejuvenation or the redemption effort was what happened to Judge Bork.What’s your memory of how that went down?
Well, I would put Biden at the center of it, but not the sole driving force.I recall a conversation when Bork was nominated, a conversation with a Democratic strategist at the time, and asking, “What would be the reaction within the party, and particularly among Democratic presidential candidates?”And his reaction was, everyone will have to oppose this with every bit of strength that they can bring to it.
And so it wasn’t just Joe Biden.As you recall, Sen. [Ted] Kennedy was vociferous in his opposition, in language that was more flamboyant, I think, than probably almost anybody else within the Democratic Party.Biden certainly held the gavel, but he was not the only force that was moving against Judge Bork in those hearings.He may have helped—helped move it, but there were others within the Democratic Party.The party was so united against Judge Bork in those hearings that Biden, had he had any other view, would not have been able to prevail.But he obviously held the same view.
So when you look back on ’87, ’88, ’89 Joe Biden, looking forward to know that he’s going to be a presidential candidate now, what happened to him in that time period that’s of real consequence?
Well, I think he’s in a holding pattern politically.He has a sinecure in the Senate, which gives him a platform.He has power within the committee structure to be able to focus on issues and hold hearings and keep himself prominent in that way.But in terms of the national Democratic Party, he is a voice, but not, at that point, a truly central voice.
I think the other thing to remember about Biden, and it’s easy to remember now, is that the ambition to be president certainly never left him.Whatever scars he took away from 1987, and the experience that he went through when he had to leave the race, it does not in any way diminish his belief that he can and should be president someday.
Trump and the Central Park Five
Let’s go to New York City for a moment here.Crime and race are big stories in New York in 1988, ’89, ’90.Rudy Giuliani is running for mayor.And the city itself has been bankrupt and bereft, at times, of almost anything that you would recognize as the New York now.And in Central Park, there is a—emerging from Central Park, there is a horrendous crime that dominates the daily news, the <i>New York Post</i> and the regular headlines, New York City.And Donald Trump takes out an ad, a full-page ad, in the newspaper, essentially really taking on the young men who were arrested for the crime, and really, and the first time, going from the advertising and personal celebrity to something more public affairs–oriented.What do you think—looking back now, which is easier to do—what do you think is going on with Donald Trump at that time in this realm?
Well, in the absolute clarity of hindsight, you could say that Donald Trump, at that point in his life, had begun to have real political aspirations and wanted to, in one way or another, be identified with certain aspects of political life and political causes.And he chooses, as is very common with Donald Trump, something as controversial as it could be, to get into the middle of crime and race in a city that does have a serious crime problem at that point.
But the way he does it is classic Donald Trump, which is to draw attention to himself by taking out a full-page ad.This is not somebody who went on a local radio show to talk about it.He may have done that as well.But his idea was to brand himself, being the master brander, by taking out a full-page ad and drawing attention to both himself and to the issue that way, and identifying himself with it through that means.
It’s interesting that if you begin to chart him, as we’re doing, and you see race on the agenda there, and then it eventually flows to birtherism, it feels almost like an—like an obvious trend that’s happening with Donald Trump at the time.
Well, that’s why I say that the clarity of hindsight is very valuable.But you can almost draw a straight line from what he did with the Central Park Five to then onto birtherism.There is something within Donald Trump that makes him drawn to those kinds of issues: very, very divisive issues; issues that are aimed at a particular part of the electorate or the population; that, in one way or another, stir things up.Donald Trump is a stirrer.He likes to stir the political environment.
Biden and the Clarence Thomas Hearings
Now let’s go back to Mr. Biden, who’s sitting, again, in the chair of the Judiciary Committee—white men in every direction, to the left and to the right.And there, at the table, is either Clarence Thomas or Anita Hill.The impression one has in looking back at Biden’s role and lots of policy issues is this effort to thread the needle.He’s become a kind of conciliator, which may have made him a very successful person in a Senate with a different kind of composition and aspiration, a sort of bipartisanship, as an idea that maybe they were operating under.
In this case, when you think about the Anita Hill–Clarence Thomas moment, race and gender really coming to the fore in a way that will resonate, even today, what do you think about Biden’s performance?
I think this is an example of what it is like to be a senator for that many years, which is to say, you become quite comfortable in the environment of the Senate.And that environment is one of comity—not comedy, comity—which is to say, getting along with your colleagues and trying to be a soother, if you will.And Biden has always had that aspect of his personality and his being, a conciliator, somebody who tries to bring people of different views together.And in many ways, and particularly in those days, that was always prized.That was seen as the way to get progress, to bring together people of different views.
So if you’re chairing the Judiciary Committee at that moment—very, very high-stakes moment—he is, I suspect, thinking more about his role as a senator and as a committee chair than he is thinking about kind of the larger issue as seen and experienced outside in the rest of the country, and particularly what women were going through, and particularly what an African American woman was going through.That is a lot, as we’ve learned over the years, that is a lot for a white man to absorb and to be—to have any real understanding of.
And so the way he handled those hearings, in retrospect, was in a way that was, in a sense, tone-deaf to those issues having to do with women and race, and much more attuned to kind of the comity of the Senate.
Sitting next to Strom Thurmond, right next to him.I mean, that’s exactly right.This is the moment where you say—and having Thomas say, “This is a high-tech lynching.”The historic resonance of all of that is amazing, that Biden would be in that situation and that we would all be able to pull that stock footage up and run it again and again on television over the decades.
Those moments were so supercharged.Having covered that story with several others at the <i>Post</i>, I mean, the environment within that room, the power of Anita Hill, and as you say, the rejoinder from Clarence Thomas, when he talks about a high-tech lynching, that was a moment, again, that just galvanized people on both sides.And if you are Joe Biden at that moment, you are feeling all of the pressure of those both sides coming at you.On the one hand, you recognize the pain of somebody like Anita Hill, but you also want to provide a forum in which you are judged as having offered a fair hearing to everybody.
And so I think that he went overboard in trying to provide that fair hearing to Judge and now Justice Thomas and therefore has regrets about the way Anita Hill was treated in those hearings.
Flashing forward, in Sen. Biden’s career over the next few years, there’s a lot of effort, it seems like, to redress the grievance of the women’s groups.He gets very involved in legislation and other things, that it’s almost like you could feel that he’s trying to do a makeup of what happened there.And he also probably has an eye on the White House one more time.
Oh, he’s clearly trying to make amends.The criticism of those hearings didn’t begin 10 years later or 20 years later or in the months before he decided to run for president in 2020.It began right away.There were people—there were lots of people at the time who felt that those hearings had gone off the track and that Anita Hill had been railroaded off the stage.And if you are Joe Biden, again, clearly with an aspiration to become president someday, you have to take steps to try to ameliorate the damage that’s been done as a result of that.
And so he does become much more active.He’s involved in the Violence Against Women Act.He’s a principal advocate for that.And that—he begins to channel kind of that aspect of the post-Anita Hill environment in a way that will be obviously beneficial to himself.But beyond that, I don’t think it was all personal ambition that did it.I think he recognized that those were issues that he wanted to be associated with and that needed to be dealt with at the time.
Biden’s 2008 Presidential Run
Yeah.Let’s go to 2008.He’s going to run again.
… The way a lot of people tell us, he is a good campaigner.He gives a hell of a speech.He’s feisty as all get-out.He works hard on the stump out in Iowa and other places.But he just doesn’t seem to be catching fire anyway.What’s the deal with Biden as a presidential candidate?Why can’t he seem to wake it up out there?
There are always people who run for president who, either on paper or out on the stump, look as though they should break through at some point.And Joe Biden was one of those kinds of candidates.I mean, people like Joe Biden.He has a winning personality when he’s out on the stump.And he is a very good retail politician.And in an environment like Iowa, that should work.
And one of the things you saw in 2008 is that, as you went around Iowa, people liked Joe Biden.People thought highly of Joe Biden.But he happened to be running in a year in which you had two superstars at the head of the pack.You had then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, and you had Barack Obama.And everybody else in the race became an afterthought.Nobody else could get any real oxygen.Nobody else could get what you might call a fair hearing.Obama and Clinton waged such an epic struggle in Iowa—and, frankly, John Edwards was part of that.I mean, there were—there were three people in Iowa, in 2007, who were credible candidates and who were battling it out in the polls.And John Edwards was the third.So that left people like Joe Biden and Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd, all of whom had résumés that would say, yes, they are credible presidential candidates, and had personalities that you would say would begin to break through.
But there’s only so much that voters can do.There’s only so many candidates that voters can get serious about.And so Biden was crippled by that.I remember a conversation, literally the day before the Iowa caucuses in 2008, and I was talking to some of the Biden people.And they said: “You know, something’s happening.We feel the movement.We feel momentum.We think we’re going to do very well.”And I later talked to a senator who had been out there working, who also thought the same thing, who thought that Joe Biden had suddenly begun to get the momentum.And then caucus night came, and he was a distant, distant afterthought.And so it was just—it turned out to be the wrong year to run for president for Joe Biden.
What was he running on?I keep asking this question.What did he stand for?What was the big idea Joe Biden was selling?
Joe Biden was running as Joe Biden.Joe Biden has always run as Joe Biden, that he has the set of skills that would make a good president.It’s not as though he’s identified with any particular issue.It is that he becomes acceptable to as broad a part of the Democratic Party as he can make himself, and I think that’s always been his stock and trade; that in the end, the combination of personality, of experience, of the kind of empathy that he’s able to project, and a belief in himself will make him carry the day in the end.And that—that’s, in a sense, that’s both an asset and a liability.
The gaffe.What did he say about young Sen. Obama?
Well, this was—this was very early on.It was literally at the time he was announcing his candidacy for president.And he made a comment about Barack Obama, and thought he was being complimentary, and described him as being “clean and articulate.”And those words just blew up.I remember, again, writing the story of his announcement.And the story of his announcement was really the story of the gaffe rather than the story of his announcement.It completely took over the opening of his 2008 presidential campaign.
Obama, in a sense, sort of gave him a pass without giving him a pass.And nobody else was willing to give him a pass.Now, with some politicians—and I think Biden is one of those—there are enough of those episodes that some people say, “Well, that’s just Joe Biden being Joe Biden again.”And they do give him a little bit of a pass.And it didn’t knock him out of the race, but it was a reminder that this was somebody who was capable of doing those kinds of things, who was, in many ways, his own worst enemy, whether it was because he didn’t know when to stop speaking or because he could say things in the moment that would get him into trouble.
And so you had, at the beginning of his campaign, a reminder both of the attributes of somebody who had the kind of experience he had and the kind of talents he had, but also the limitations that he would bring to that race.
Biden as Vice President
So when Obama not only forgives him, but picks him as his vice president, as his running mate, the effect on Joe Biden’s career is what?
Well, he’s been completely rejuvenated.I mean, he’s been reborn by this.I think it’s important to remember that in that 2008 campaign, the Democrats had—I can’t remember—the Democrats had two dozen debates.I mean, they had constant debates.And the reality is, Joe Biden acquitted himself well in those debates, not in a way that made him a more attractive candidate, not in a way that brought him more support in Iowa or New Hampshire, but in a way that said this is somebody who knows what he’s talking about on a lot of the issues that are brought up during a presidential primary debate.
And Barack Obama could see that firsthand.When you are a candidate on that stage, you get to know the other candidates in ways that you hadn’t beforehand.You are watching them.You are debating against them.You are in the green room with them together.You form friendships and relationships.And so obviously, by the time Obama becomes the nominee and is thinking about what he needs in a running mate, one of the things he needs is somebody with some foreign policy experience, somebody with real Washington experience, which Obama did not have at that point, but also somebody that you have gotten to know well enough that you think you want this person at your side over the next four or eight years.You want this person to be, in a sense, the last voice you hear when you’re having to make a tough decision.And so turning to Joe Biden—in thinking about him turning to Joe Biden in that way, it’s not that big a surprise.
They talk about the fact that Obama’s staff made a lot of “Uncle Joe” jokes.Often he was the subject of some ridicule, his age, whatever.He’s losing it.He’s a step slow.He’s from a different time.What does Biden do?How does he find his way inside that administration so that he can feel that he’s substantively contributing in some way to the Obama administration?
Well, on foreign policy, I think Joe Biden always believed that he had, through the long experience of being in the Senate and being on the Foreign Relations Committee, the background and the knowledge that would contribute something to the debates.And there was their early debate within the administration about what to do about Afghanistan, whether you increased the troop levels, as the Pentagon wanted, or whether you don’t.Barack Obama had run against the Iraq War, but he had always been very careful in saying that the Afghan War was the right war to have gotten into.
And when this landed on his plate, about what to do about, do you increase the troop strength, Joe Biden was a voice of dissent within the administration.He was somebody who was reluctant, who was unwilling to buy into the Pentagon view.And this put him at odds with people.Bob Gates, who stayed on as secretary of defense after being with George W. Bush—Obama asked him to stay on—Bob Gates had certainly quite different views than Joe Biden did.But Biden was never unwilling to keep his own views silent.He was willing to be part of that debate.
And I think that Obama appreciated that, even if he didn’t always agree with Biden or side with Biden in the end.He was happy to have kind of the independence that Biden felt comfortable with in those internal debates.
It also feels like he carved out, in one of life’s political ironies, race as a territory he could go in on behalf of a president who was undecided about just how public he wanted to be in terms of stepping into racial crises, especially killings, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, those kind of things Biden himself carves out, in some way, that role.Tell me about that.
Well, I think it is, in large part, because Obama had been so reluctant to get into the issue of race.You know, Obama did not run a racial campaign in 2008.Quite the opposite.He ran what you might call an—he ran—he tried to run a post-racial campaign, which is to say, not to talk about race, not to draw attention to the fact that the country would be electing the first African American, but to be somebody who would—who would move the country beyond that, in a sense move the country past any conversation about race, which, as we know, is impossible in American politics.But nonetheless, that was part of the strategy of Obama.
And Biden did not have to worry about that.As a white vice president, that was not going to be a liability for Biden, to be talking or being involved in race issues.And again, going back to his—to his involvement in and interest in the civil rights movement, he was attuned to racial issues throughout his political career.And so it was an area that he was quite comfortable talking about, becoming involved in, being an advocate for.
Biden as Grief Counselor
A lot of vice presidents have been on the funeral beat.Heads of state all around the world, they always joke about the fact that that’s what they do.Biden seemed to take grieving, grief to a new level as vice president.It’s almost like he rewrote the role of the vice president of the United States, at least at that time, of going into situations.And when we go back and we look closely at Biden, there is this grief counselor in chief sort of quality about him.It’s almost like a calling that he decides to take on.Now, maybe he’s been good at it partly because of his own life and across the years.Is it something he’s had and carried with him?And is it of real import that he is that way?
I don’t think you can manufacture that.I think that comes from within.And the experience that he went through, when he lost his family, part of his family, in that crash, as he was moving into the Senate, I don’t think you ever get away from that.And you go through something personally, and it affects people differently.But obviously, he had internalized it in a way that he was able to give it back to people in moments when they were grieving, or in moments when a community was in grief.
And as vice president, yes, there are obligations to go to funerals.But people carry it out in different ways.And in Biden’s case, there is a genuine quality about not just the words that he speaks, but the emotions with which those words are spoken.And we have seen it repeatedly, over many years, his ability to be in the moment and, in a sense, to be of one with people who are suffering and grieving, and to find the words to give them a sense of comfort and a sense of hope.So I think that that is a real part of the Biden persona.
Trump and the Power of 'The Apprentice'
Let’s talk a little bit about Donald Trump, who, meanwhile, is star of a network television reality program, where he’s playing a powerful and successful entrepreneur CEO.Here again, we have—hindsight is in our favor.What’s he doing?What’s he learning?What’s he getting from that experience, Dan?
In that era, or in that period, is—is melding what he had learned dealing with the tabloids in New York City with a more modern sense of communication, which is to say, reality television.He comes to reality television without necessarily having any background in it.But he comes to it with an appreciation for what it can do for him.And there are—there are stories about the degree to which he studies ratings.He is obsessed with the ratings of reality TV.Many people would do the kind of show he did with <i>The Apprentice</i> and simply revel in being the star of the show, but Donald Trump wanted to be number one.He always wanted to have the highest ratings.
And so he studied those ratings and figured out what it was that moved those ratings.And it was out of that that he developed a sense of how to, in a sense, command public attention and how to shape his own brand.So it was a—it was a precursor to running for the highest office in the land in an era of social media, of cable television, in a new environment that most politicians, certainly of his age, had not any real experience in, and certainly no mastery of, in the way that Donald Trump was able to master it.
When you think about it, what does he probably learn?What do you think he’s learning, as a potential politician, about America at that time, as his rating rise in reality television?
I think he’s learning, at that point, the power of celebrity in American politics.Certainly that’s always been a factor in our politics.And Obama benefited from that in 2008.He had become a celebrity.But I think Donald Trump recognized it in a—in a more direct way and found it as a way to take advantage of it.I think he recognized that entertainment is now a central part of American politics, and certainly of presidential elections and presidential campaigning, again, in a way that his rivals, who are schooled in traditional politics, either didn’t appreciate or had some kind of disdain for, who felt that it was, in some way, beneath them to engage in that kind of campaigning or that kind of approach.
Donald Trump actually decided that you can fuse everything that he had learned about celebrity and entertainment and ratings from having been on <i>The Apprentice</i> into a presidential campaign, and that if you do that, you can change the character of that campaign.You can dominate the conversation in ways that your opponents are struggling to do.
Biden Declines to Run in 2016
In the years 2015, ’14, ’15, heading to ’16, for Joe Biden, he’s thinking about running again.He has a series of conversations with President Obama about whether he should do it or not and whether Obama would support the idea, knowing full well that Hillary is out there.Has a series of back-and-forth negotiations with her, too.What’s Joe Biden thinking about then, in terms of why then, why at the end of this presidency?What would be in his mind about why run one more time?
Well, two things are in his mind at that point.The first is, he wants to be president.And if you are vice president, that’s a natural thing to think.But it’s been part of what Biden has thought about the entirety of his career.He wants to be president.The second thing he’s thinking about is, I’m not going to have another opportunity to run, given my age, because he’s in his 70s at that point.And so 2016, to anybody rational about politics in those days, you would say it’s either now or never.It’s either up or out.If you don’t do it now, you’re not going to have another chance to run.
And he knows Hillary Clinton is there.He knows that Hillary Clinton is in most ways the heir apparent to become the nominee, that it is—it is her time.And he is torn.And he goes through this agonizing process of trying to decide whether to run.And it’s happening at a time when his son Beau is dying.
He’s so emotionally conflicted through that period, and after Beau’s death, he’s emotionally not ready to run, but in another way, he’s not ready to say he won’t do it.And so we went through a period of months in which he was agonizing in a quite public way.And there were stories he’s leaning in.No, he’s not leaning in.He’s leaning out.Well, he’s still undecided.Well, he may do it.
I had a sense at the time, as I was trying to cover that story, I said to somebody: “This is like trying to cover smoke.You can’t ever get your hands around it, because it’s so much inside Joe Biden’s head,” but that he could not bring himself to say yes, but he was not willing to say no.And I think what in the end happened was, he decided he would just let the clock run to the point that it became too late to be able to run.So he never quite had to make that yes-or-no decision.The decision got made for him.
There’s people we talked to who say that he was deeply hurt that Obama didn’t support him, go with him, that he—there’s apparently one lunch where, the way the story goes, he really wants Obama to say, “Go,” and that Obama just finally shuts him down, and it essentially, the way the story goes, devastates Biden, that the man he thought he had this great relationship, close friendship with, wouldn’t support him.What do you know about that?
Well, there are other people who know the intimacy of that relationship and those conversations better than I know it, but I think there’s one aspect about it that’s important, and that is that I believe that Obama believed that if Biden were to run against Hillary Clinton, he would lose again, and that running and losing would be devastating, more devastating than deciding not to run at all; that if he ran and lost, it would be the final stain on an otherwise pretty illustrious political career.If he did not run, he would go out as having served four decades in the Senate, two terms as vice president, a very popular vice president to a very popular president, and that that would be the legacy of Joe Biden’s political career.
And so, again, others may contradict this, but I think that in a sense, Obama recognized political reality in a way that was painful for Joe Biden to hear, but that was probably beneficial for Joe Biden at that moment.He was not ready to run in 2016.He was still deep in the grieving process for the loss of his son Beau, who he thought would become president someday, had it not been for the cancer.And so if you talked to people who knew him at that moment, they are not convinced that he was ready to be able to be a real presidential candidate.And I suspect President Obama saw that as well, knowing him as well as he knew him.
Could he have won?
Could he have won?I don’t think he could have won the nomination.Could he have won the presidency if he had become the nominee?Yes, I think he could have.
Trump and the 'Access Hollywood' Tape
Meanwhile, in the fall of 2016, Donald Trump faces one of his big crises that may tell us a lot about him, his politics, American voters, and that’s the <i>Access Hollywood</i> moment.What do you think that says about our politics, that he survived—that he seemed to survive that moment, and the way that he survived it?What does it tell us about him?What does it tell us about us?
Well, politicians have learned, over time, don’t quit.Try to weather the storm, if you can.Bill Clinton was living proof of that.He went through a lot of things in 1992 and—and continued to fight and prevailed.The other thing is, Donald Trump was different than other politicians.In a sense, he wasn’t a politician.And we saw episode after episode where he did something or said something, that the immediate reaction was, well, this will kill his candidacy.
And there were people outside the campaign and inside the campaign who assumed that that was probably a fatal blow.And they learned, over time, that what might be a fatal blow for other politicians was not necessarily for Donald Trump; that there was something about Donald Trump, who was constantly so outrageous, that people became calloused to it.It didn’t mean that they liked it, but they kind of accepted it as part of Trump’s personality, and they saw in him other things that gave them a reason to vote for him.
So when the <i>Access Hollywood</i> tape is released, and David Fahrenthold of the <i>Post</i> broke that story, again, you thought, he cannot survive this; he will not be able to survive this.And he gives that kind of hostage video of a speech that night, in which he expresses remorse for what was on the tape, in a way that nobody believes he has real remorse, because it just—it looked so forced.And that’s the best he can do.And behind the scenes, people are telling him: “You need to quit.You need to protect the Republican Party.The whole party will go down.”And Donald Trump is not that kind of a politician.When he is under attack, he fights back.
And what we saw in the subsequent days was the Trump campaign trying to turn the fire at Hillary Clinton.There was the presidential debate in St. Louis a few days after that, in which the Trump campaign brought several women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment or misconduct or worse to the debate.And when Phil Rucker and I talked to the campaign later, and we were doing a retrospective toward the end of the campaign, we said, “Why did you do that?,” and they said, “We were a campaign that was in tremendous pain, and we had to bring more pain to the other side.”And that was the strategy for Donald Trump.It was do whatever you can to get through these moments.
Biden and the 2020 Race
By 2020, of course, Joe Biden announces his candidacy.And in some ways, everything he’s done comes back to haunt him, and everything he is comes back to haunt him in some way, right?
The run-up to the formal announcement is a series of reminders of the bad and the good of the long career of Joe Biden.The Anita Hill issue comes back.There are—there’s a suggestion that he is, as the term became, too handsy in dealing with people as he’s talking to them on a rope line, that he puts his hands on—particularly on women’s shoulders or on the back of their neck or things like that; he’s—that he is too tactile.The whole issue of dealing and being comfortable with segregationist senators comes back at him, as he makes a comment about working with them in a way that seems complimentary of those segregationists.
And all of that is building up as he’s waiting to announce his presidential campaign.And so it was a clear reminder that he would come into the campaign, again, with various attributes that other candidates might not have, but some very clear liabilities that, in one way or another, he would have to deal with, and overcome, if he was to become the nominee.
The clearest, starkest moment happens when, as we hear it, a friend of his son Beau’s, Kamala Harris, former attorney general of California when Beau was attorney general of Delaware—they collaborated on a number of items, and I think Biden thought of her as at least friendly—at that debate, when she really dismembers him verbally.Take me there, and tell me a little of the background, and then what was the meaning?
This was the first debate among the Democrats.It was in Miami Beach, and Biden was the front-runner in the polls, in the national polls, for the nomination.You had a field of two dozen people, and so the Democratic National Committee had to break the debates into two evenings, with 10 people on the stage in each case, and Biden was on the second night, and Kamala Harris was there.
And I think everybody knew that Biden would get some criticism from somewhere, and probably multiple criticisms.It comes with being the front-runner.But I don’t think anybody quite anticipated that it would be from Kamala Harris.And certainly Joe Biden did not anticipate that.And you could see in the reaction, when she went after him and started it by—with some preface about, “With all due respect,” or trying to soften the blow, if you will, just came straight at him about his own racial history.
And two things about that were important.One was his shock that it came from her, because he believed that she was—and she was a good friend of Beau Biden’s, and therefore had respect for the vice president, and would be gentle and would be understanding of him and would understand the context of all of that.And the second was his own sense of pride about his record on civil rights, the idea that somebody could challenge him as not being strong on civil rights.And she went after him on the issue of busing, forced busing, which was a terribly controversial policy back in the ’70s, when Biden was there.And he had opposed forced busing in Delaware.
He stays with it.Maybe it’s who he is, or maybe he’s got no place else to go.But he stays in the race and keeps banging away.
Well, the truth of the matter is, that was the first debate, and it had an immediate impact on Kamala Harris’ candidacy.She had started the race with a very, very big rally in Oakland; 20,000 people turned out.In the February-March period, before Biden became a formal candidate, she was as strong or hot a candidate, if you will, in the sense that people saw her as a very possible nominee.
And one of the things that happens after that debate is her poll numbers spike up.This was a moment that she got as a result of that debate.But over time, the wheel turned.And by the time of the second debate, Biden was ready to go after her.And I think that she turned out to be a better prosecutor than a defense attorney, if you will.When she came under attack from Joe Biden, she was ineffective in parrying that attack.And I think that Biden was able, at that point, to move that issue away from him and put it back on Kamala Harris as having been opportunistic and having distorted his overall record.And he continued to push forward.But it was still an issue that was causing him some problems within the party.
Until South Carolina.
Well, until South Carolina, but that’s a long way into the future, and many more things [are] about to happen to Joe Biden before South Carolina saves him.
What does happen to him?
There was a theory within the Biden campaign, articulated by Mike Donilon, who’s the chief strategist of the campaign, that this was going to be a difficult fight for the nomination, but that Biden was best positioned to end up as the Democratic nominee; that he had the broadest support within the party of any candidate. And that, in particular, he had support among the two most important groups in determining who becomes the nominee of the Democratic Party: senior voters, people over 65, who had considerable affection for Joe Biden, whereas younger voters were enamored, again, with Bernie Sanders; and, in particular, African American voters, who appreciated Biden’s service to Barack Obama during the vice presidency but also the ties that he had built over his long Senate career.
So their theory was, he will be able to prevail, but this is going to be a tough battle.And what we saw was a candidate who was in some ways his own worst enemy.He was not a good candidate on the stump.When you think about the Joe Biden that we saw in 1987 or 2007 and the beginning of 2008, the Biden of 2019 was not as strong.I mean, in debates, people thought, OK, he’s—he’s not as sharp as he had been; he’s not as crisp as he had been.There were gaffes that he would make, some tactical slips.He would seem to forget things.He seemed to be showing his age, and understandably so.You know, he’s 76, 77 at the time.
And so what happens is, he continues to lead the national polls throughout 2019.But in Iowa, he’s in a pickle.The Iowa poll in June of 2019 has him in the lead.But after that, there’s a moment when Elizabeth Warren is the leader in Iowa.There’s another moment when Pete Buttigieg is the Iowa leader.Then there is a moment, then, in January, where Bernie Sanders, who people had thought was out of the campaign after he had a heart attack, comes roaring back, and he becomes the leader.And Biden is continuing to kind of plod through Iowa in those last couple of weeks before the campaign.
And if you went to a Bernie Sanders rally, you saw tremendous enthusiasm.Or if you went to a Buttigieg rally, you saw tremendous enthusiasm.If you went to a Warren rally, you saw enthusiasm.If you went to a Biden rally, you saw a politeness and affection, but no great enthusiasm.And their belief was that in the end, people did not need to be enthusiastic for Joe Biden, but nonetheless, they would turn out for him on caucus night.And that calculation turned out to be completely wrong.He finishes fourth in Iowa.The following week, he finishes fifth in New Hampshire.By any historical measure, he is out of the campaign at that point.Nobody has ever finished as badly as Joe Biden did in those two opening contests and come back to win the nomination, let alone win the presidency.
So he is set up, in a way, that people are writing him off and, in a sense, assuming that Bernie Sanders is the likely nominee, until we get to South Carolina.
And then it is—it’s all falling into action in some way after that.Let me ask you, Dan, about Hunter.How big a problem is Hunter to Biden?And did Biden know things about him, or did he not know things about him that he should have known about him?What about his relationship with Hunter and how he’s handled it so far?What about Hunter?
Beau Biden was the golden son, and Hunter Biden was the troubled son.And for a long time, as long as Beau Biden was alive, Joe Biden could put his hopes and dreams and aspirations into Beau Biden, and hope that Hunter Biden would find his way out of his troubles.And he was either blind to what Hunter was doing when he was vice president, or—or, you know, simply knew and didn’t take the kind of action he should have.
When he’s dealing with the issue of corruption in Ukraine, and [Hunter] Biden becomes a member of the board of Burisma, Joe Biden should have said: “This is not a smart thing.You don’t need to do this.You should take yourself off.”He chose not to, for whatever reason.And I don’t know what that reason was, again, whether it was blindness to it or an unwillingness to kind of confront it directly, particularly at a moment when he’s losing Beau Biden as his favorite son.
It is a conflict that he should have dealt with, that people in the State Department told the people in the vice president’s office needed to be dealt with.Their view was the vice president is not emotionally ready to deal with this, and so it continues on.And when it surfaces in the 2020 election, he doesn’t deal with it in a strong way.Hunter Biden is more direct in saying it was a mistake and he shouldn’t have done it.Joe Biden is more protective of his son.And so it’s a—it’s an issue.Within the Democratic Party, it’s not a big issue, because I think that their view was that it’s the Trump campaign that’s trying to turn this into an issue at a moment when the president is going through an impeachment proceeding, and it’s an effort on the part of the Trump campaign to change the subject.
What is it that puts Joe Biden there, Dan?What is it that’s got him where he is right now, at this time, despite age, despite a sort of checkered past, despite all of it?What has put him in the place he is right now?
Well, I think, in part, Donald Trump has put him where he is right now.We know that this election is all about Donald Trump.Everybody uses the cliché, “It’s the most important election of our lifetimes,” etc., etc.But I think, for many people, that is the way they view it.And for people who are opposed to Donald Trump, the single overriding factor in their consideration of this election is, who can beat him in November?And that was—that was the ballast that kept Joe Biden moving forward at a time when there were other things that could have put him off-track in the bid for the nomination.
People, when you would talk to people about this candidate or another candidate, they liked a lot of the other candidates.
And yet they always came back to the question, “But which one of these candidates can beat Donald Trump?”And somebody said to me, way early in 2019, when I was saying, “Who do you think the nominee is likely to be?,” the answer came back, “I think Joe Biden will be the last candidate standing.”And I think that that is partly what it turned out to be.But obviously, the role that African Americans played was the other factor.And so I think that Biden is where he is today because people who don’t want Donald Trump to serve a second term see him as the most likely person to be able to attract a big enough coalition to win in November.
Trump and the 'Crisis Presidency'
And Trump, from what you know about his life, from what we’ve talked about here, the crisis president, whatever people call him, what has his presidency become?
I think that, at its essence, what Trump is today is what people believed he would be when they decided to take a chance on him and vote him in as president, and that is the disrupter, the person who would shake up a status quo that they feel has not been good for them; that this is somebody who is fighting the elites, however you want to define that, who is fighting against the forces that a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump believe to have not had their interest in heart; you could say whether it’s for economic reasons or cultural reasons, or frankly, for racial reasons.And we know that that’s certainly a factor.
And everything Donald Trump does, everything Donald Trump says and then has done throughout his presidency, is—he is the person who is still the disrupter, the stirrer, the person who’s going to take on the people that are hurting you, that are against you.Now, for some Republicans, the fact that he embraced, in many ways, a traditional Republican agenda—big tax cuts, conservative judges, things of that nature, deregulation to the business community—that is something that they cling to as a reason to stay with Donald Trump despite everything else.
And it’s one thing to fight against the deep state and other enemies and be this crisis president, this <i>Apprentice</i>-like figure who can create a crisis every news cycle.But it’s another thing when suddenly, you can’t control that agenda, because this pandemic comes along, or the George Floyd murder happens, and things just get out of your control.What has that done to the Trump-style, approach, theory so far, that we’ve been able to witness?
I think the biggest thing it’s done is a—robbed him of the single most significant attribute he had to run for reelection, which was a strong economy.Even though he was never consistent about that message, nonetheless, he had that in his back pocket that he could take to the electorate in November, until the pandemic hit.So he is doing everything he can to remind people that he built an economy, a strong economy.People can take issue on whether he really did that or how strong it was, but that—he’s still trying to remind people of that, and that he’s going to be cheerleading for a strong economy beyond that.
On the race issue, I think what we’re seeing as a result of what happened with George Floyd is we’re seeing, at least in the short term, a sea change in attitudes in America, a recognition of the deeper problems of race and racism in America that have not been dealt with.And the pandemic has brought out the inequalities in society; particularly that the health care inequalities, but other inequalities—the wealth gap as well—that have not been dealt with, that people have talked about, but nobody has taken seriously, all of that has come forward.
And I think what Trump is trying to do is change the subject.What he wants to do is try to warn people that if Joe Biden comes in, if the Democrats come in, they are going to destroy this country in one way or another; that they are going to put left-wingers in charge of everything; that antifa is the new enemy, in a way that he used the caravans coming up from Latin America during the 2018 campaign.Donald Trump likes to find enemies and to hold those up as—that he is the protector against those.
The Choice Between Biden and Trump
So my last question, Dan, is, what’s the choice?
Let me try to phrase this.I think the choice is having four more years of a presidency that could, in many ways, dramatically change the country versus a presidency that would be a return to some calmer period, but without a sense of exactly where the country would be going.So it’s a—it’s a choice between continued chaos and some more moment of calm, but with clearly different directions in terms of policy.
But I think, in the end, that policy is not the choice that’s on the ballot this year.I think it is a choice of character.It is a choice of temperament.It is a choice of persona and personality.And that’s always a factor in our presidential campaigns, but I don’t think it’s ever been as big a factor as it will be in November.
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