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Fintan O’Toole
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Fintan O’Toole
The Irish Times
Fintan O’Toole is an Irish journalist who writes for The Irish Times and The New York Review of Books.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on March 11, 2024, prior to Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Biden’s Irish-Catholic Identity
Let me ask you, what made you interested in Joe Biden?I was just saying, there have been so many books written about Trump and so many people are experts on Trump.What was it about Biden that drew you to studying him, who he is, his life?
I suppose, because I'm Irish, there was a particular interest in Joe Biden, not just in that he was a senior American politician, and at the time a kind of potential U.S. president, but also I've never seen a politician, other than in Ireland who emphasizes so much this idea that he's Irish.This is his identity.
And in a way, it's fascinating, because Biden is not an Irish name.His middle name, Robinette, is French.So how come we get this guy who identifies so strongly in ethnic and indeed, in religious terms, as an Irish-Catholic, who does not ostensibly seem to be very obviously connected to the country I come from?That itself, then, is kind of fascinating, because it gets you thinking about, why does he identify so strongly in that way?
And of course, one of the main reasons has to be the Kennedys, right?So it's not that hard to imagine yourself back into the 1960s, into that whole context where political change seems to be happening in very profound ways in the United States.You've had the Civil Rights Movement.You have the huge divisions over the Vietnam War.You have, I suppose, a kind of general shift to liberalism, although it's very, very contested.
And at the heart of that you have these kind of tragic figures of John Kennedy first, and then Robert Kennedy.And Biden obviously is someone who identifies himself very much as being there at that time, and idolizing the Kennedys, really, and then, after that tragedy, wanting to place himself as someone who might be able to continue their legacy.
So I want to talk to you about all of those things, and we'll break them out.Let's start first with this idea that he's—you say it's not just that he's Catholic.He identifies himself as Irish-Catholic.
What does that mean for him to say that he's Irish-Catholic, and why is there a distinction?
So when Biden says he's Irish-Catholic, he's really talking about a fusion of religion and nationality that happened because of the circumstances of Irish history and a very kind of divided, troubled history.Huge numbers of early Irish migrants to America would have been Protestants, but from the Great Famine in the middle of the 19th century, the overwhelming sort of Irish-American identity is a Catholic identity.The Catholic Church is very much the way in which those communities are formed.
Joe Biden would have grown up in a very Irish-Catholic community.And this is a time when Catholicism is just really beginning to be accepted as an unproblematic American identity.So of course, the majority of Irish-Catholics in America are white, so that's a kind of privilege.But there's also this sense that actually being Catholic and Irish you’re used to being on the outside.Irishness was seen as poor migrants coming in who were threatening American society, and of course Catholicism was seen as being the antithesis, really, of America's Protestant identity.
So out of that marginalization, you get a very strong kind of community identity, right, which is kind of saying, “Yeah, but we're people who can be American, who can have a role in American life, who can stop the traffic on St. Patrick's Day, who can be a very visible part of American society.”And so you've got that tension there, I think, which would have been very much present even when Biden was growing up in the 1940s-1950s.
It comes to a head in the 1960 presidential election, really, with John F. Kennedy.It's hard to remember now, but Kennedy has to answer a lot of questions when he's running for president about, “Are you going to be taking orders from the pope in Rome?”Really, genuinely, is that sense that actually Catholics can't be good Americans because they owe allegiance to something else.
And as we know, I think what always happens when people are kind of pushed into those corners, they double down on that identity, that it becomes a kind of defiant one.Kennedy's election is really a kind of huge moment for the whole sort of idea of being Irish, not just in America, but in Ireland and elsewhere where you have, in a way, this identity which has been kept to the margins, is now very much being triumphant and being celebrated.
But then it has this sort of terribly tragic outcome.There's the murders of John and Bobby Kennedy make this triumph into a tragedy.And I think both of those things play on Biden's mentality.So he identifies with the triumph, with this idea that Irish-Catholicism can be an American identity, but he also identifies with the tragedy for terrible reasons of his own.
… Is there a little bit of a need to prove something because of that background?
So Biden very much identifies with this idea of the Irish as having been oppressed.And this—if you're growing up in the 1950s-early 1960s in America, of course the biggest issue is the Civil Rights Movement.Biggest issue is race in America.And one of the attractive things about being Irish is that you're white, but not guilty.You're not white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.You're not from what's seen as historically the kind of dominant American identity, and therefore you can say, “Well, we identify with Black people.We identify with that struggle.”And you can do that in a way that releases you somewhat from having to deal with all the historical guilt.
When Biden is a young politician, busing, for example, was still a really major issue, and it's one on which he's, to put it mildly, pretty ambivalent.Subsequently, Biden will talk about himself as having been very much involved in the Civil Rights Movement, but there's not much evidence that he was.And I think, for him, he can sort of see, “Well, I also have a history through my Irish identity of being oppressed, and therefore this allows me to make this link,” without necessarily having had to walk the walk.
So Biden, when he's talked about Irish history, it's always very much in the frame of his grandmother's stories about the Black and Tans.The Black and Tans were a kind of British official government militia, which was used to suppress Irish rebellion in the early 1920s, and they ran amok, and they killed a lot of people.And they were pretty terrible.But it's almost the way, when Biden talks about it, it's almost as if he was personally oppressed by the Black and Tans, as if he has this history of suffering from this violence.
And it's completely sincere.And obviously it's part of his family history and something that he connects with, but I think it also does have this political advantage, in a way, that it places you on the side of the victims rather than the side of the victimizers.
As you said, he's Joseph Robinette Biden.His dad doesn't have this background.And so in a way it's a choice that he seems to make early on.Is there something about the family dynamics between his father, his mother, his grandmother, that you think leads him to embrace this as his identity?
So Biden's family seems very matriarchal, certainly in the way he talks about it, the way he's written about it.He obviously had a good relationship with his father, and there's not any sense that there was a division between himself and his father, but he seems to identify a lot more with his mother.His mother seems to have been kind of a powerful personality in the family, not atypical in Irish-Catholic families or Italian-Catholic families or a lot of other groups who come from those kind of very close-knit family cultures.
And then he identifies a lot with his grandmother on his mother's side.So the way he talks about his lineage is the father's side of it gets sort of forgotten a bit.It's very much that sort of Finnegan family who come from Ireland and the grandmother and her stories, and that kind of links them back then into the 1920s and into the whole period of the Irish War of Independence and all those kind of troubles in Ireland.And that seems to be what sort of weighs on his youthful imagination.
So I don't think there's much evidence that this has to do with family conflict at all.I think it's just more to do with the fact that the women in the family are very powerful presences, and ones that clearly have a big influence on him growing up.
Joe Biden’s Father
Yeah, it's interesting.We're trying to figure out who his dad is, who has this downward trajectory, who has success early in life, and they have the polo clubs in the closet because they're now living with the in-laws.Do you think part of shaping Biden is his dad's trajectory?
An awful lot of people who go on to do extraordinary things actually come from the same kind of background, which is of family success, which is followed by family—at least in financial terms—family failure.There's something about that kind of experience as a child.Somebody coined the phrase "downstarts" rather than "upstarts."There's something about that.You look at the number of writers, the number of politicians. …
I think it manifests itself in Biden, I think in this almost epic sense of destiny.It's very easy, because Biden's such an affable person and easygoing, very easy to miss the fact, though, this is a guy with a very, very deep sense of ambition.He's as ambitious as Donald Trump in his own way, and it's quite grandiose.
We get this sense of him, in the late '60s-early '70s, really wanting to re-create for himself a kind of Kennedy dynasty, a political dynasty.And the Kennedys are not just this sort of great Irish-American political family, of course; they're also a huge economic success story.They're rich.And it's not that Biden pursues wealth in and of itself, but he certainly pursues status, and he certainly wants to be a person of consequence.
And he wants to do that in a way that is generational.I think this is what's very specific about Biden.Lots of politicians have big egos and are driven by a sense of ambition.That comes with the territory.But I think what makes Biden very specific is that he clearly has this sense that he's creating a kind of Biden empire which will last beyond his own death.
And I think, subsequently, that's what becomes tragic, and that's what really perhaps explains why he's not going to give up power.He has to make the most of it, as it were, because this familial ambition to create this generational dynasty evaporates in the most terrible circumstances.
A Sense of Calling to Politics
Do you think that he has—to go back to the Catholic thing for a minute—a sense of calling in politics?In his biography, there's talk that he wants to be a priest, and his mom says “Hold on.Don't make this decision now.”Is that connected to his religion, the going into politics?Is there a sense of calling?
… It really is important to remember that Biden is very religious.It's not just a sort of badge that he wears.It matters deeply, deeply to him.And certainly a large part of the culture, the religious culture of that kind of Catholicism, is one in which it's very, very male, only—only the boys can become priests; the girls can't.And there's a deep, deep multigenerational tradition within that Irish-Catholicism of wanting to have the priest in the family.It's a real honor for the family to have a figure like that.
And therefore, there's a kind of deep formation for a lot of boys growing up in that culture, where we're going back to the 1940s-1950s, this is what you look up to; it's what you aspire to.I think, for Biden—obviously sex is a big issue.So the deal to become a priest is you get all the prestige, and you get the social status, and you get the spiritual status, but you lose out on a sexual life, or at least you should.And I think Biden's always been very clear that he was very attracted to women and wanted to have that kind of life.
So what's the alternative?The alternative is politics, that sense of mission, that sense of having the social status that comes with that of having that kind of leadership position. …
And one of the things that's worth remembering is that the basic skills of the priests and that kind of politician are pretty similar.They're retail skills.They're the skills of remembering people's names, asking them about their kids, remembering the kids' names; being able to communicate a genuine sense of concern for people's welfare; being the person in the community to whom you can turn in times of trouble; having a sort of sense of network; of being a sort of mediator between the family on the one side, on the big world of the state on the other side.The politician fills the same kind of social role, I think, as the priest typically did.
A Kid with a Stutter
But of course, one of the big contradictions about Joe Biden is going into politics, he's a kid with a stutter, [for whom] it's difficult to even get a sentence out.How do you make sense of the stutter and the effect that that has on him?And how does he end up being a politician from having that disability?
I grew up myself with a very bad stutter, probably as bad as Biden's.And it sort of has a strange effect on you, I think.So you're kind of faced with a pretty stark choice from early adolescence.You can either just retreat and say, “I can't function in the public world.I can't be the charming guy out there talking to girls.I can't impress my classmates.I can't tell jokes.”There's a whole range of things that you just take for granted through being able to articulate.And if you can't do that, what do you do?Go off and write novels in a cabin in the hills somewhere, or you have to force yourself to become a sort of public figure.
And I think you can really see that with Biden.It becomes really self-conscious.So all the things that other people just take for granted, right, which is you could speak to people, they become something that you have to make an enormous effort to do.You have to school yourself.You have to teach yourself.You have to steel yourself.In a way, you also have to become unembarrassed.That's the hardest thing for an adolescent kid to do. …
It is something to do with self-awareness.And I imagine, if you asked Biden—and he's kind of hinted at this in the way he's written about it—I think he would probably rather have gone through that difficulty and become the person he is than not have it.At the time, I can guarantee you, as a teenager, it's not really what you want.You would have anything other than that.But I just know, from my own experience, that you kind of feel, well, actually, I'm kind of the person I am because of it, because I had to overcome it.
He definitely is, but he also remembers it.He apparently remembers to this day the names of the people who ridiculed him and bullied him.
Yeah. It's something you feel very deeply, of course, because you do get bullied and ridiculed.And even more so, you kind of internalize that.A lot of stammering is about anticipation.If you talk to people who have the disability, the terror is in thinking ahead.Can I say that word?That consonant is going to trip me up.As a result, a lot of people who stammer actually become pretty good verbally, ironically, because they have to have a large vocabulary.You've got to be able to substitute words.You've got to be able to do all that kind of stuff.
And I suppose you have to develop a bit of a thick skin.And I think one thing we can say about Biden is he has a thick skin.He's a remarkably resilient person, and I think some of that has to be rooted just in that experience.
It seems like that decision, that moment, and he talks about having an Uncle Boo-Boo who had a stutter, and who was an alcoholic, and who was apparently a very lovely person, but was also somebody he didn't want to emulate.Is that a crucial moment of decision for young Joe Biden?
I think absolutely it's huge for him that he can look at his uncle, whom he was obviously very fond of, and I suppose you can really easily see that you can say, “Well, he has the same disability as I have.He's ended up as an alcoholic.”These things can be connected, right?If you withdraw into yourself, or if you need false confidence to allow you to operate in society because you can't articulate properly, it's real easy to see a young Biden recognizing this as a possible place for himself to go.
And there is something really admirable, I think, in Biden's toughness, just his sense of himself, that he was not going to go down that road and that he was destined for better things. …
Biden as a Product of His Times
How much do you need to understand to understand Joe Biden, the time that he grows up and the time that he's in college?Because it's the '60s, but it's not the late 1960s; it's the early 1960s.How much is he a product of his time and the particular moment he was born?
I think he's very much a product of the time he was born.I suppose we all are.But it's a time of great ambiguity, isn't it?It's a time where, of course, famously it’s—people have never had it so good.The economic circumstances for ordinary people are improving at historic rates, in America but also around a lot of the Western world.And access to education, access to health care, access to decent jobs, social mobility—all of those things are kind of happening for Biden.He's a great example of this.He's someone whose family circumstances had deteriorated, but it's the world of the boom which is giving him all these opportunities to go to a good school, go to college, become a lawyer, and then imagine himself in his 20s as a senator.He's thinking, I'm going to run for the Senate.There's something about that sort of optimism and sense of possibility that's there in the early '60s, which absolutely shapes Biden.
But the ambiguity, of course, is that it's also a time of enormous division, crisis and uncertainty about what does it mean to be an American.So you're benefiting from this American dream, but there's also the American nightmare.There's the nightmare of racism, which is being confronted literally on the streets.And of course there's the nightmare of the Vietnam War, which raises all sorts of questions about America's place in the world, about its values, about how does it want to see itself, and for the first time, of course, in American history, deeply, deeply divides the society about an external war.And this becomes, in a way, a division which has still not gone away.It's still bubbling away underneath there.
And so Biden's experiencing both of these things, and he's experiencing both the privilege of being a white kid in a booming America, and because he's politically aware and politically ambitious, having to be sensitive to the fact that actually that big, sort of optimistic story is also being contested and in some respects, kind of falling apart.
It's really interesting thinking about what Biden doesn't do.If you were to, in the abstract, think back about, OK, this guy becomes a liberal Democratic president, and you projected that back into the early 1960s you would think, well, is he out getting arrested on civil rights marches?Is he out taking part in protests against the Vietnam War?Is he growing his hair long and taking drugs and dropping out?He's doing none of those things, really.
He's a very interesting figure, because he's a sort of, actually, personally very conservative figure who's nonetheless positioning himself to operate in a world where that liberalism, that openness, that optimism, that sense of change and transformation are driving forces.So he has to somehow capture all of that sense of change while being himself a very conservative lawyer in a suit, with a briefcase, with short hair, getting married young.Personally, he's much more like somebody out of the 1950s.He's much more like a kind of 1950s dad.But politically, that's not going to wash. …
And I guess the question is, why?Why is he not an ideological politician?Why is he not there on the line, carrying the sign?Why is he Joe Biden, the man you're describing?
I think the reason that he's not out there getting arrested or protesting the war or really deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement, or even in personal terms living this sort of alternative lifestyle, is that he has a very clear sense of what a political career looks like, and it doesn't look like that still.That might be what's happening culturally and socially and out there on the streets, but it's not what's happening in Congress.It's not what's happening in the Senate.It's not what's happening if you want to be a potential president.
But what it looks like is Bobby Kennedy and, of course, John.… Bobby Kennedy's run for the 1968 nomination for the Democratic Party brings together all these forces.So it brings together the Civil Rights Movement.It brings together the anti-Vietnam War movement.It's going to be supported and touch base with the sort of alternative lifestyle movements.
But Bobby Kennedy is a former attorney general.He wears a nice suit.He's a family man.He's got kids.He's a good Catholic.It balances these things of being able to draw on those kind of radical energies, but it still seems very important that the person who can embody this change is still reassuring enough to mainstream America.
And I think Biden picks up on that very, very quickly.I think personally, in any case, he is quite conservative.He's just not somebody who's interested in experimenting with radical lifestyle changes or with radical ideas. …
Inspired by the Kennedys
What's interesting about the story you're telling is that it goes back to the Kennedys; it goes back to the example they were setting.And there's also the tragedy of the Kennedys, of John F. Kennedy, RFK—not a Kennedy, but Martin Luther King, at the same time.How important were those deaths in shaping the politician that Joe Biden will become?
That terrible caravan of death of John F. Kennedy and then of course so close together Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King has a very profound effect on Biden.There's no question that those—this is the future, which is being obliterated.It's the future you thought lay there for you as a sort of aspirant politician, but also for America.And Biden talks very movingly about standing there to watch the train carrying Robert Kennedy's body going across the country.
And you know, he sometimes mythologizes things, but I don't think he mythologizes that.I think that is a very profound, moving moment for him.And I think it has two effects.I think it introduces this idea of grief into Biden's public persona, which is going to be, unfortunately, taken up in the most terrible ways, but it also frankly sort of opens up an idea of how do you create the continuity?How do you continue?
So he uses this rhetoric very effectively early on, which is picking up the torch.So JFK had talked about that torch being passed to a new generation.Well, now the torch has been dropped; it has to be picked up.And you could say this is self-serving, right?He wants to be the guy who will be the new Irish-Catholic politician who will take up that mantle.
But I think it's more than self-serving.I think it does have a genuine moral and psychological force, right, which is that those deaths impose a certain kind of duty to not let the killers win, particularly since the killers, in a way, do win we can all think back, what would America be like if Martin Luther King had lived as long as he should have, as this extraordinary moral force, and if Robert Kennedy had won the election?If Robert Kennedy became president, America would be a very different kind of place.
And even at the time, I think people had a sense of a possible future that was being stolen from them, and stolen in the most terrible violent way.So there's something legitimate about this idea of, well, somebody has to step in and try to continue, try to create the future that's been taken from us.
… This goes to something about Biden, who apparently has his family out there, sort of looks like the Kennedys.His sister is there.His wife is there in that campaign.And one of the phrases we heard somebody say, that people would say about him, is the Kennedys quote the Greeks, and Biden quotes the Kennedys.Is there a sense of, from the beginning, of it's an imitation of the Kennedys and that he's missing something that they embodied?
I think he is trying to imitate the Kennedys, and I think he is doing that without—certainly really picking up on the pretty profound radicalism that Robert Kennedy certainly had arrived at by the time of his death.In a way, he's much more like the early JFK who was also—JFK was running from 1960 on youth and glamour and family all those kind of things, and not particularly radical, in terms of the political proposition.And I think Biden is kind of trying to rerun that.
And there's certainly not a particular sense that he's as far left as Robert Kennedy had become, in terms of what he represented.And so there is a sort of slightly crazy ambitiousness, which is less political than personal.He talks to people about wanting to have a family compound, which is Hyannisport and the Kennedys.And it does have this slight element of fantasy about it that this is something you can be.The Kennedys have shown you how you can be it, and he's going to try to follow along that path.
And the terrible, terrible thing that happens, then, is that he's imitating the Kennedys, and then he gets the fate of the Kennedys, which is tragedy.It hits him really, really hard.And of course it hits him right at the moment when his political career was actually beginning, which is the car crash in which his wife is killed, and his kids are injured.And this fate that seems to drag on the success story of the Kennedys in the worst possible way, it inserts itself into Biden's life, and in a terrible way, he becomes more like the Kennedys than anybody would ever wish.
Death of Biden’s Wife and Daughter
Does he ever recover from that car crash?How profound of a moment is that in his story?
No one can ever recover from something as shocking as that, a bolt from the blue, at that age with a young family.Anybody who's watching who has experienced that, I think, could echo it.And we can all imagine.It's just not something you're ever going to get over.It's always going to be there in your life.
I think what happens with Biden with that is that it reinforces his sense of toughness, his sense of resilience.In an odd way, it goes back to the stuttering.It goes back to—he's had to create a persona which can endure.This is obviously vastly worse than not being able to articulate your words; having to actually face that kind of tragedy is much worse than that.But something must feed in from that toughness, that sense that you cannot be defeated by this.
And what he couldn't be defeated by as a teenager is words.What he can't be defeated by now is death.He is a haunted figure from then on.And nobody refers to him for those 10 years after he's elected to the Senate except as Joe Biden who lost his wife under tragic circumstances.It becomes absolutely part of his political persona.And he does not exploit it.It's not something that he's using.But it's just inevitably part of his persona.He is a tragic figure from then on.
And how do you deal with that?Tragedies and drama just end with the—then the curtain comes down, and it's over.But the curtain can't be over or can't come down at 30.His political life was literally just beginning.He's the youngest member of the Senate.He does actually represent something of a new generation of people.
And he has to carry on.And he has to carry on with this consciousness and this awareness.I think one of the things it might do for Biden, that tragedy, is actually make his religion more personal to him.So Biden's religion has been sort of ethnic and political; in the broad sense, it's a communal identity.
And it becomes, I think, at the moment of his wife's death, a profound personal consolation.I think one of the reasons why he remains a very devout Catholic is that it's a private arena in which he finds some kind of comfort and some kind of meaning.And I think whether you're religious or not, it's easy to understand why you have this absurd cruelty, meaningless thing that happens to you.A truck crashes into your wife's car; that's it.How is any of us going to deal with that?You have to look for some bigger meaning.
I think in a personal sense, he looks for the meaning in religion, in a spiritual idea.And in a political sense, I think it actually makes him oddly more ambitious.I think the more tragic Biden's life becomes, the more he has to give meaning to it through political achievement.His life has to be worth living, and it's worth living through this idea that he has an impact on history.Something lives on from his wife, later on from his son, and then implicitly from himself.I think that's the only way you can deal with that amount of tragedy.
It's interesting that you compared it to his stuttering, when you were talking about that as a decision, and it seems like this was also a decision point.He talks about, you said the consolation of faith.But in that moment, he talks about the anger at God.He talks about possible suicide.He talks about going out and looking for fights and resigning the Senate seat, right?Like everything seems like it's up in the air in that moment, right after the crash.
See, he's a man who's been faced with really stark choices.Most of us sort of get through life with, yeah, you do that rather than that, but we would hope that we're not faced with having to make these kind of yes or no choices.The stuttering is a kind of yes or no choice, where you either just sort of retreat and become a reclusive sort of person and an introvert, or you really face it.You really deal with it.
And the death of his wife is the same thing, where you either decide, “I'm going to become an alcoholic who wrecks bars and kicks people around the place, and takes my rage and anger out on the world, or, if I'm not going to do that.I have to make choices about how I carry on.”Obviously, a huge part of carrying on is the kids.Again, I think we can all understand this, that you face this thing.Well, if I justify myself by becoming this kind of person who's raging against the world all the time, what happens to my kids?You have a responsibility.
And I think there is something very touching in the way that he invests so much in his kids.Again, you could see that it maybe has a slightly crazy aspect to it, which is the dynastic idea that's there.And maybe it's already planted, but it becomes—he's thinking about his kids as kind of future presidents.But again, it's so understandable, it's a way of thinking about your kids as in the future and of not being overwhelmed by this terrible force of death.I suppose you can understand that you've—what are you going to place against death?You've got to place something pretty big.And in his case, it's a sense of destiny.So it's death or destiny, that he chooses a sense of destiny.
Finding Solace in the Senate
Yes.And this conversation is explaining something, I think, that I did not understand before, which was—because one of the mysteries of Biden's life is he talks about his anger at God and his lack of faith.He also has said that he thought of becoming a priest, and he talked to a bishop, and he said, “Well, I'm not married anymore.I've got the kids.It's like, is this possible?”And I couldn't figure out how to square those.But it sounds like, as you're describing it, those were sort of the two life choices that he was trying to figure out.Maybe the politics wasn't going to work in the wake of that.
You know, he already has this sense that he has to matter around the world, you know.And to matter means to have meaning.It's about, something has to make sense.It has to make sense of your life.And sudden death, out of the blue, just takes all the sense out of your life, doesn't it?I mean, it just seems to say, “The universe has no meaning.Life has no meaning.There is no purpose.Everything is just completely random.”
And so, you can look to the two things that are available to him, to try to insert meaning back in, you know.And one is religion, and the other is politics. ...
The way he describes it is [former Sen. Mike] Mansfield convinces him to stay in the Senate—"Come for a little while"—and that he finds some kind of home among these mostly older white men who are in the Senate.They remind me a little bit about the way you were talking about the church.Help me understand the importance of that, of going into the Senate in the wake of the car crash and the solace that he finds there.
The Senate is not unlike the Catholic Church.It's a sort of older, older male bastion of power, and privilege and authority and status.And he would have recognized that world I think, from the whole Catholic experience.
And of course, with the trauma that he's suffered, it's very easy to understand how this idea of having a supportive environment would be very, very appealing for him—a sense of purpose, a sense of collegiality, a sense of belonging, a sense of being liked and respected.It's very hard to imagine that now.If you think about the Senate, the last thing that comes to your mind is this nice, warm homely place where people can have a sense of comfort, regardless of their political identities.
But it obviously still does contain that.And he identifies that, and I think he's very shaped by it.So in a way, the Senate kind of suits him very well, because the culture of the time affords this idea that you can have your own political principles, but everything has to be compromised.And he's a sort of natural compromiser.He's not a sort of instinctive radical who wants to change everything very profoundly and suddenly.He wants kind of progressive change, certainly, and liberal change, but he wants it incrementally.And he's quite happy to work with other people in order to try to achieve that.
And I think he finds in himself that all those sort of Irish traits of the old Irish politician come out—the affability, club-ability, the idea that you can sit down and shoot the breeze with people and make connections and use those then to get things done politically—I think all of that comes pretty naturally to him.And it's a very comfortable way of thinking about himself.He can think about himself as a person of principle and ideals, which he—certainly he is, but I think he almost likes the idea that you can't fully implement those principles and ideas in the Senate.You have to negotiate and compromise.I think that sort of takes the edge off in ways that actually quite suit him. …
Biden 1987 Presidential Run
And he hasn't given up.Even as he's running in '87-'88, he hasn't given up on this idea of the Kennedys being reborn.How does he position himself going into this audacious quest for the presidency as a young politician?
Well, he uses the rhetoric very much of them.He keeps harking back, in a way, to the '60s, so very much seeking the Democratic Party nomination.He's really very much saying, “Our heroes were slaughtered. They were killed.They were taken from us.And I am the reincarnation of those heroes.I am the one who's going to kind of pick this up.”
And he exaggerates his own involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, for example, which was not extensive, to put it mildly.He projects very much the sort of Kennedy-esque type of thing.And, of course, he takes language directly from Robert Kennedy, so it's almost like he's ventriloquizing Bobby Kennedy, which of course becomes hugely problematic for him.
But psychologically it's a very gothic kind of moment where you have this man who's been marked by death and grief, trying to almost kind of summon the ghosts of the dead Kennedys and speak for them and let them speak through him.It's a strange moment in American politics, I think, where there's a sort of hauntedness about it.
And, of course, it doesn't work for that very reason.There's something almost too psychologically complex and strange that's going on here.It's not as simple as there is this legacy and I'm continuing it. ...
And these questions of authenticity, of Kinnock, of Kennedy, of who is he and what does he stand for—why does that trip him up?
It's pretty weird, isn't it, that there's a question about who's to blame.But he takes bits of speeches from British Labor leader Neil Kinnock, and he takes bits of speeches from Robert Kennedy, and he kind of uses them pretty much verbatim.And it's sort of just strange that that doesn't really strike him.It doesn't strike him as being, "This is not something I should do."
And I think it comes from this sense that he thinks there's nothing wrong, in a way, with him being someone who is kind of almost being the ventriloquist, dummy that other people are speaking through him, and because you would think otherwise, just your political antennae would pick this up that just apart from not being a particularly ethical thing to do, you think, well, maybe there's not a good idea; you're going to get caught. ...
I think the problem is that his own idea is so dependent on this notion that I'm kind of continuing other people's legacy that he's not really able to define himself in his own terms.He's a sort of ghostly emanation of somebody else's political presence.That's what makes it strange, and also I think makes it doomed.
One of the other things that happens with that is after that all blows up, there's the questions about his law school records, and he has this heated exchange with a voter, and he's defending himself, and he says he's smarter, and he sort of makes up these things about him.And in that, you can see a real anger at the idea that this voter is disrespecting him, doesn't give enough regard to his background.How much of that is part of Joe Biden, the need to prove something, the politician went to a state school?And even there, an experienced senator running for president, has a reaction like that.
There's something in Biden's makeup, which is that he's had to develop such a thick skin that when the skin is thin, it's very thin.It’s a paradox somehow that he's had to will himself into creating this kind of psychological shield, which is to do with the tragedy particularly.And underneath that, there's almost no normal skin.There's just this actually very, very thin skin, which is probably where all the grief is, all the uncertainty, all the sense of absurdity and meaninglessness that you get from his life experience.
And it's almost—anything that kind of gets through the thick skin really hits a raw nerve for him.He can become a very angry man pretty quickly.I actually think it's a source of strength for him, that he comes alive in some way when he's pissed.He seems more like a real person when you get through to that sense that he is being disrespected, and he's going to give it back, and he's not going to take it.And he's suddenly this little kid who feels he has to really stand up for himself against the bullies.
And you kind of can see the kid who's being bullied about his stutter, and all that stuff just sort of comes out again.And it's partly what makes him more recognizable as a real human being rather than as this person who's, for very understandable reasons, has had to create this defensive shield around himself.
The Clarence Thomas Confirmation Hearings
As we get to the Anita Hill moment, how much we talked about that family or emotional connection he had to that institution of the Senate, and there he is on the panel, with the other male senators sitting in judgment of Clarence Thomas and, to some extent, Anita Hill.How does he find himself in that situation, and how does it link back to who he is and where he came from?
I think the Anita Hill episode was a real revelation of the weaknesses of Biden's political persona.So he's obviously risen very successfully within the Senate.He's in this very powerful position of the Judiciary Committee.He's really pretty much able to stop a Supreme Court nominee if he wants to.That's a pretty powerful thing to be able to do.And obviously he's got there by being somebody who can work the system very well and get the respect of his colleagues, be well-liked.
And he sets out to operate the Clarence Thomas hearings on exactly that basis.“We're all good guys here.We all want to achieve the same thing.We're going to be nice to everybody.”And that's all very well until you come up against a profoundly serious allegation by Anita Hill, sexual harassment, which is not just the specific allegation itself but of course touches huge issues around gender and around race.So talk about raw nerves.There's a whole bunch of them that are being hit very hard.And Biden seems to miss them.He seems not to be able to grasp the fact that this has gone from being a nice procedure in which we're all going to try and operate on a bipartisan basis and be decent, and there's not going to be any conflict.
And then, whether he likes it or not, it's profoundly about conflict.And in particular, it becomes this conflict about gender, and his treatment of Anita Hill is really pretty terrible.Of course she emerges with these allegations.He encourages her to give evidence, and then he does nothing to protect her whatsoever.He leaves her in this incredibly exposed situation, where she has to go and talk in front of the nation.Everybody's watching about intimate, difficult, awkward, personal things, and he sort of says to her, “Oh, you'll be OK, kiddo.”“Kiddo.”And the “kiddo” thing is Biden at his sort of affable self.Everybody's "kiddo."
This is in the phone call?
In the phone call.He says to her, “I'll take care of you, kiddo. Don't worry.”And this is not a “kiddo” moment.This is a huge moment in American history, in the whole kind of collective psychology of American life.And he's still in the bubble, really, of this very male, older Senate club, who really do not know how to deal with this other than ultimately to think, well, the man is the man here.Whatever this woman is saying, it's kind of a bit dubious and awkward, and how do we know she's right?
And of course none of her witnesses are called.But Biden doesn't ensure that the people who might support her testimony are called.I don't think he deliberately sets out to leave her in this exposed position.I think he leads her, because of his affability, and because he's trying to be a nice guy, into reassuring her that this will all be OK.But to make that OK, he would have had to do some pretty big things.He would have had to force his Senate colleagues to completely reorder those hearings so that they become hearings about sexual harassment.And that was—that's pretty tough stuff.It's stuff that would inevitably then—if this leads towards the Judiciary Committee saying that Clarence Thomas is not a fit person to be a Supreme Court justice, this blows apart a whole set of questions about race, about sexuality, about politics, identity in America.
And Biden is just not ready to do that.He pulls back from all of that and leaves dangling huge questions about Clarence Thomas's fitness for the office, but also really lets down Anita Hill.But no matter what you think about Clarence Thomas, just trying objectively as possible to look at how Anita Hill was treated, just at a personal level, it was terrible. …
A Second Run for President
He's somebody who goes into the Senate extraordinarily young, who becomes part of this institution, who's in Washington for all of these decades.By the time you get to 2007-2008, as he's considering running for the president again, in the year of Obama and Hillary Clinton, does it feel like his time has passed him by?Who is he by that point, when he's once again wanting to run for president decades after his first try?
The extraordinary thing, given subsequent advances, is how much, facing into that election, the idea of Biden running again just seems like some sort of crazily persistent delusion.It just feels like somebody who's, “You've tried this before; it hasn't worked.Why the hell are you still going?It's not going to work this time.You've never really established a persona that has a lot of people cohering around.You're a popular person.People like you.You seem to be a good guy.”But is anybody, in 2005-2006, thinking what the country really needs is Joe Biden, apart from Joe Biden?
And there is something at that time that just does seem like this guy doesn't really have a grasp on political reality.If he thinks he's going to be president, it's not real.And I suppose who has the last laugh is the obvious question.But he certainly seemed, at that time, like someone whose political work was done.He'll probably remain in the Senate, because people do, and do interesting things there perhaps, but was he going to be someone who was going to have a profound effect on American history, American life in 2005-2006?Would you have thought that?The answer was no.
Biden as Vice President
It's interesting.He gets asked to be the vice president, and he says that initially his first inclination is no, to not take that job.But he's convinced that he should.Would you think that was a hard decision for Joe Biden at that point, who'd been in the Senate that long?
I think it's a hard decision for Biden to be vice president because, well, first of all, because he's been around a long time, he knows how difficult a position [of] vice president is and how, very often, vice presidents just disappear.But also, I think people underestimate his ego.I think he does think, I should not be number two.That's not who I am.I should be president.
And I think it is hard for him.I think it helps that, oddly enough, that Obama is so much younger and so different.As potentially the first African American president, there's something historic about that, and there's something where he can kind of say, “Well, it's not like I'm Ted Kennedy's vice president, or I'm not playing second fiddle to one of my own peers.Something new, something different is happening here.”And that, I think, then allows him to step back and step down a little bit and form a relationship with Obama, which actually becomes a very important one, and allows him to become a national politician in a way that arguably he had not quite ever been before. …
As you said, he takes himself very seriously.And there's apparently reports that in the first year of the presidency, he's thinking, that should be me sitting in that chair.But he's also a bit of a joke.There's “Uncle Joe."This happened in the Senate, too, that he was sort of a gasbag, that he's a guy who’s gaffe-prone, that he's long-winded.Help me understand those two images, his own self-image and then during the Obama years, the way he's talked about by Obama's aides, in the press, too, the dismissiveness that he feels.
One of the things that Biden allowed to happen, I think, is that he allowed this gap to open up between his sense of himself, which is one of very high regard.He does think of himself as a person of destiny, and the way in which he expressed that politically, which was, what do I say if I'm a person who's going to change America, if I'm going to be a historic figure?
I don't think he ever worked out what does a person of destiny sound like?Obama knew what a person of destiny sounded like..Whether you liked Obama or you didn't like Obama, there's a rhetoric; there's a grandeur, which is historically rooted in classical speech, in biblical speech.It has a high standing to it.
And Biden has always struggled to find a rhetoric or a language which matches his sense of himself.And this is where you get the long-windedness, and this is where you get gaffe-prone Joe, because what is he actually expressing?What he's expressing so often was “I'm a really nice guy.You should like me.And here's a few things I'd like to say.”So his speech is almost pitched at the level of a parish.
It's almost going back to the Catholic parish, the priest.The priest gets to talk at length, because nobody can interrupt him up there on the pulpit.And actually, people sort of will complain about long sermons, but there's a certain kind of world in which that sort of male figure who likes the sound of his own voice is also kind of comforting and reassuring, and particularly when they can throw in the jokes, and they can be folksy, and they can talk to you afterwards, and slap your back.They create a kind of connection, which Biden is really good at doing.
But he has this rhetorical problem.And it's not accidental that he gets disrespected in an administration whose great strength is the rhetorical power of its leader.And some of that disrespect is entirely wrong and unearned.And I think Obama himself came to understand this, sort of, which is that they didn't need another rhetorician.In fact, another rhetorician competing with Obama would have been a real problem in that administration.They needed someone who understood how legislation works.They needed someone who understood the nuts and bolts of retail politics.
Obama was not good at doing political dirty work.He had a contempt for it, and I think he came to understand that the reasons that he made Biden his vice president in the first place were really valid reasons, that you actually need somebody who does have that experience, who knows how the politics works.And he deserved a lot more respect from that point of view than he got.
But I think because it was an administration which was so drunk on linguistic power, the guy who didn't have that linguistic power was almost going back to being the 13-year-old kid who couldn't articulate properly being a little bit bullied.
And the effect on him?He was reading this in the press, and apparently raised eyebrows.And Obama may have adjusted over time, but he was apparently leading some of it, at least at the beginning.And the effect on Biden of all of that?
I think it had to be humiliating for him.There had to be a sense that he was being taken for granted and exploited to some extent; that they needed him but didn't reciprocate the respect that he gave to Obama, and then gave to the administration.Nobody's ever questioned his commitment, his work rate, his seriousness as a politician.He wanted to do the job.
And it's just unthinkable that this didn't hurt him very profoundly.… And of course it manifests itself in the most brutal way, which is, there's a reasonable expectation on the part of a two-term vice president that you're going to be presidential candidate next time out.Obama's making clear pretty early on that Joe was not going to be his successor.And that's a pretty harsh, cruel thing to do.
I don't think Obama did it for personal reasons.I don't think he did it to get at Joe Biden.But it is a betrayal nonetheless, if you worked very closely with this person who was your number two, who has made very, very clear, for a long, long time, their ambition to be president and even beyond that, their sense that it's their destiny to be president, if you're, first of all, by your attitude, making it clear that you don't think they're up to it, and then making it explicitly clear that no, you're not going to be the candidate, that it's going to be Hillary, there's just a harshness to that on a personal level which Biden had to have felt.
And of course, what it does, is—so everything bad that happens to Biden has the opposite effect, right?His difficulty in articulating as a teenager makes him determined to be a public speaker, a politician.The tragedy of his wife's death makes him determined to be someone who can carry on in public life.And the slights in the Obama administration make him even more determined to be president.He has to sit one out, and he sits it out at an age when anybody else would say, “Well, my time has gone.”
I think 99% of people in Biden's situation, coming up to the 2016 election, would say, “Well, look, I've had a good career.I've had half a century nearly in politics.I've been in the Senate from the time I was 30.I've been vice president twice.I've had the perks of office.It's time to move on, do something else, or go fishing, or spend more time with my kids, my grandkids.”But in his case, this is the dynamic of Biden.The slights make him even more crazily determined to achieve the thing that he should not be able to do.
Beau Biden
Let's go back to the other missing piece in that calculation.While he's getting the slights, do you think that Beau, his political career—this is before the illness—is that a consolation?Is he seeing his vision of the dynasty playing out during the Obama years?How does his relationship with Beau, especially, affect him in that?
This whole question of succession, I think, is a key thing for Biden, because he has this sort of generational and dynastic sense of politics.And there's no question that he sees Beau as his successor; that Beau is the one who's going to be the Biden, both in familial terms, and of course then in political terms.He's going to be the one who has the political career, who will, at the very least, inherit his Senate seat.And then he says this explicitly.“He'll make a great president.”It's this sort of weird thing that there's a period there where Biden is both John F. Kennedy and Old Joe Kennedy the patriarch who is planning for his family name to be carried on through politics and through political power.And he undoubtedly invests a huge amount emotionally in that idea.
Maybe he would have thought that way anyway, because this Kennedy thing is in his head from early on.But I think undoubtedly, the death of Beau's mother, Biden's first wife, makes that even more necessary.Something about Beau surviving that car crash, being the kid who emerges, literally, from the wreckage, feels like there's a kind of destiny—that terrible, terrible moment will be somehow balanced out in the future, by the swearing in of President Beau.
And again, some of this can seem ridiculous, over the top.But you can sort of see a certain sort of psychological truth operating in it, a way.This is a man who needs consolations, and I think this is the big consolation is going to be Beau's future.
… If you have had to make sense of the car crash, and you've interpreted it as your political destiny as part of the meaning of that car crash, and that this dynasty is, that it's all resting on Beau, for Vice President Biden, at that point, when his son gets sick and then dies, how profound a moment is that?
I mean, for any human being, you know, the idea, when you're older, the thing that haunts everybody is, I just don't want one of my kids to die before me.It's such a basic impulse, isn't it?The natural order of things is "I don't want to think about my kids' death.But at least I should be dead before that happens."So having to face your child's death at any age, in any circumstances, is horrific.
And then, for Biden, there's a sort of extraordinary cruelty to it, because Beau is everything you would want.He's the veteran.He served his country.He's come through that, of course.So your big fear as a parent is going to be with war.Well, my kid might die in the war.And so there's that basic thing.Well, we got through that.Everything surely now is going to be OK.
You then have the illness, the protracted illness, and then you have the death.And you have those things happening at a moment when Beau's political career was taking off, when the idea of his future is becoming very real and tangible and realistic.
So you've got this double blow.You've got the basic human tragedy that would overwhelm anybody, and then you have this bigger sense of collapse, of what you thought the future was going to be, which was not just your personal future but also a national future, a future of America.And it's just impossible to imagine how you deal with those two things happening to you through this terrible, terrible moment of grief.
And again, it faces Biden with this choice.This is what we keep coming up with Biden, that he's faced with choices nobody would want to make or have to make.And so again, he either does the things that I think most of us would do at that stage, which is just say, “I'm done.Whatever life is doing to me, it clearly doesn't want me to continue to be a big public person.My private grief is so overwhelming, I just have to deal with that for the rest of my life.”
Or you somehow psychologically find some way of saying, “Well, I still have to make sense of this.I still have to inject some kind of meaning into all of this absurd, terrible, cruel tragedy that life has inflicted on me.”And the only meaning for a 50-year politician is the presidency.That's the thing which has always been in his mind, but now it becomes almost not just a kind of political career, it becomes a personal salvation.
He makes two decisions, once again, and the first one is to not run.And when we see Joe Biden go out in the Rose Garden, how lost is he at that moment, after Beau's death, after Obama has said Hillary Clinton is the future?As he is walking out there, what is that point in his life when we see him decide not to run for president?
I think anybody watching him as vice president when he's not running for president, and is making that clear, no matter what your politics are, you would just feel a huge sense of sympathy.It really does feel like this man's, both his public and to some extent his private lives are over, because he's had the rug pulled out from under him in political terms, and then he's had this terrible tragedy.
And even worse, is Obama was sort of using Beau's death as a way to excuse his own betrayal of Biden, because what Obama is saying is, “Well, in your condition, with all the stuff you've suffered, you really shouldn't be putting yourself through a presidential campaign.”Again, I don't doubt that there's a sincerity to that on Obama's part, but it's also a kind of way out of this very difficult personal dilemma.It sort of allows you to say, “Oh, well, it's not because I don't think you're up to the job, or I prefer Hillary.It's because this terrible thing has happened to you, and therefore you shouldn't do this.”
So all of these things are fusing together at that moment.They're all coming on top of him.And he really does seem, at that moment, like a tragic figure in an almost Greek sense, someone who the gods have chosen to pile these miseries on.And at the end of those Greek plays it's like, everything—it's not just one thing, but everything kind of moves together to just blow up somebody's life and somebody's sense of themselves.And that's what seems to be happening to Biden at that time.
Biden Runs in 2020
… Leading up to his decision to run against Trump, Beau has died; Hunter has a deep descent, which must be terrifying, especially after Beau, that he's watching.He's questioned about who he is.That moment, right before he decides that he's going to try one more time, who is that Joe Biden?
I think the Joe Biden who decides he's going to try one more time is the Joe Biden who was deeply, deeply marked by grief.I don't think a person who was not as deeply hurt as Biden has been would have made that decision at that stage of his life, having failed so many times, having gone through all that stuff.I think if you'd led a happier life, you would say, “Look, I've got so many lovely things in my life.I've got so much content.I don't need this.And OK, I'm never going to be president, but so what?”Your life is not tragic if you're not president.But his life was tragic already.
In order somehow to make sense of the tragedy, it has to have, if not a happy ending, at least a meaningful ending.His life has to end with a sense of something epic, something big, something that marks it as having been well lived.… If you've lost your wife in a car crash, if you've lost your blue-eyed boy of a gorgeous son, if your second son is descending into absolute chaos, if you've been a vice president who was deeply disrespected in a lot of ways, how do you vindicate yourself after all that?What's the meaning of your life?It has to be something big.
Writing another book, getting onto The New York Times Best Seller List, isn't going to do it for you.And I think he sees a moment where this is possible suddenly, and there's no way he's not going to go for it.
Has he moved beyond imitating the Kennedys at that point?One of the moments people point to now is they say, “He stands on the stage, and he's got the future of the party behind him, and he says he's transitional.”Is he different?Is it a different campaign than '87?
Oh, I think it's a completely different campaign because, of course, it's so much shaped by the pandemic.It's so much shaped by Trump, by the sense of chaos.And it allows him to really kind of switch completely over, right?A lot of his political career was about being new, being young.That obviously fades over time.And sort of finding a new language, it has been his problem.This is why he's kind of the Joe of the gaffes, because he doesn't have a language.
And now, suddenly, there is a language.And it's a language of actually being the old guy; being the guy who's been through it; being the guy who has experienced the pain, who knows, in a time of mass death, what it feels like.And so he can present himself, now, as a transitional figure at a moment when actually just getting through a transition seems like a big thing.
Usually in history, just getting us over these few years, because that's pretty small potatoes, right?Not at that time.Not coming out of the Trump presidency.Not in the middle of a terrifying pandemic.Transition is actually a very big idea.And that is what he presents, and that's what seems to be his message.“I can restore some sense of calm.I can restore some sense of dignity.I can just let us all breathe again.I can also let us grieve as a nation.So all this kind of madness and chaos of Trump is not allowing us to sort of just absorb what's been happening, and what's going on.And I can do that, because you know who I am.You know what's happened to me.You know that this is—part of my whole persona is this sense of loss.”
So it sort of suits him.There's a moment, I think, where all of the pain he's suffered does find a certain kind of vindication, just by being a kind of figure that they talk about him—in theology the priest as the wounded healer.The priest isn't supposed to be someone who's perfect.Not supposed to be a saint.It's supposed to be someone who actually has felt pain and can therefore heal.
And I think what Biden presents himself in that election as is the wounded healer.Only somebody who is half-broken can actually relate to a country which is feeling very broken.
And the other thing that's interesting is he's always been an institutionalist, and his thing was like, “I can make deals, and I can compromise, and I can do this.”He's got now an anti-institutionalist in the presidency.And you write about the speech that he gives at the convention, which is about darkness and light and a Manichean view of the world.Where does this come from?Because it doesn't fit the Joe Biden we've been talking about, or does it?
Oh, it does.Again, so this is, I think, the rebirth of Joe Biden, is about finding a new language and finding something to say, which he had lacked.This is why he had seemed inarticulate in a way.He now has a language, which is partly this language of grief and healing, which is almost a kind of religious language in its foundations, and then this language of division, of absolute division, which goes completely against where he's been.He's been the compromiser, the affable guy, crossing the aisle.If there was a phrase that sort of sums up Joe Biden, it’s “crossing the aisle,” going across to your enemies and slapping them on the back, and “Let's sit down and go into a room, and get stuff worked out.”That's his persona.
And in a way it's what he wants to be, but it's a completely inappropriate persona for the moment.For good and ill, it's an election which is epoch-making.Again, it's a hard choice.It’s something that keeps coming up with Biden.These choices are stark, and Biden then has to adopt a language of very, very stark choice.
So he talks about darkness and light.He talks about a critical moment in American history where it could either go one way or another way.This isn't about any sense of sort of continuity.… He's sort of faced with having to present America with this starkness.And in one way, it's not the language he has ever used politically before but it sort of is the way in which so much of his life has unfolded, with these very stark choices that he's had to make before.So perhaps this is a moment when his inner self meets the public self.
In the Catholicism, the “soul of the nation,” darkness and light, does he—and we've said he had a sense of calling and a mission from the beginning.Does it all come together in this moment?
I think very much when Biden is accepting the Democratic nomination, he's accepting it almost as a kind of spiritual figure.And the language that he uses is religious in the very broadest sense, but it is a religious language.It's a language of good and evil, darkness and light, of chaos and healing.It's not a million miles away from what you might expect to hear in church.
It has an appeal at that moment, I think, as well, because it also does resonate with a broader sense that there's a moment here where America can go one of two ways, and he does connect pretty successfully to that, I think.
And with a sense of meaning and life, does he feel like he's personally called to that moment?
I think there's no question for Biden, that this is a sort of indication of his life, as well as of his politics. …
For all the difficult reasons, you know, Biden taking on Trump, and beating Trump, is a big moment in American history, and he knows that.And he clearly has a profound emotional investment in that.I think it's a political investment, of course.Of course he thinks it's important.Of course he profoundly disagrees with Trump.Of course he wants to do things very differently from the way Trump has done it.All of that is true.But I think beyond that, there is this very deep sense that, so this is why I'm here.This is what all this horrible pain is about.This is what all this difficulty is about.This is what all the slights I've had to endure, you know, all the ways in which I've been underestimated and mistreated through life.And all of these absurdities that have been piled on me through—through death and illness.And okay, this is—this is it, you know.I'm here now.And there's something that matters, not just to me, but to America and the world.
… There's a contradiction, as you've described it, between Biden the politician, the compromiser, and Biden the orator who's warning about a Manichean battle.What is the contradiction of Biden's presidency as he comes in, that you see?
So the contradiction for Biden is that he's elected both as a comforter, a figure who's going to take the drama out of American politics, who's going to allow everybody to just breathe and stand back a little bit and deescalate everything, and that's the comfort on the one side.And on the other side is this sense of profound crisis in America.
And do you want to be comforted, or do you want a president who's going to say, “We're at a historic moment of crisis, and therefore we have to do really big things, and we have to face profound challenges, and our very democracy is at stake”?You can't both tell people American democracy might be gone in a few years and say everything is OK.
And I think, to be fair to Biden, it's not just about him.I think there are also these two expectations on him.I think a lot of people do want a president who just gets out of my face for a while.I don't have to think about politics all the time; I don't have to be in this kind of constant fight-or-flight mode of politics.And on the other sense, there is this feel that things really are at a point of some kind of very profound choice that America has to make.
So it's not just Biden who's kind of creating this, but he does find it difficult to span those two very different molds.
And to deliver a message, a coherent message?Because you talked about the other Biden, which was the parish priest who can say lots of things.And you've written about the six crises as he comes in.For his presidency and as president, has Biden been challenged in setting and writing his own narrative?
I think Biden has found it very, very difficult to tell his own story and to sell his own accomplishments.He has very real accomplishments, particularly considering how difficult the congressional situation is for him.You look at the big pieces of legislation he's gotten through, they are real achievements.And some of them actually do have a sort of epoch-making feel to them, particularly in relation to being the first American president to really face up to the climate crisis.That's a pretty big thing when you consider how profound the climate crisis is and how much it shapes the entire human future.
He could justifiably say, “I'm entitled to a certain kind of grand rhetoric of change and transformation,” but he can't do that rhetoric.He's not Obama.And he can't do the knock-about entertainment that Trump can do.His natural language is hearty, friendly; it's kind of intimate, making intimate connections.It sort of works on a low level.It's not great in the mass-media era, the social media era, the era where you have to kind of project a story.
And I really wonder why Biden hasn't been able to think about "What forms of communication can I do?What technologies should I be using?”And you would think the people around him would say, “OK.”Trump reinvented a whole political forum, which everybody thought was gone, which was the political rally.Whoever thought American politics in the 21st century would be shaped by the physical rally?
Biden can't really do that.He's not good at it.He's OK on TV, but he's not particularly great.Why are people around him not able to use social media, use other things?If you go back to FDR, Roosevelt had a disability.He was not a great orator.He found it difficult to rally people in huge numbers.He was a brilliant communicator.Why? Because he used radio.He found a way to break through to a public and to shape a way of saying, “What I'm good at actually is an intimate tone, which I can talk to people about their fears and their hopes and what they expect of a leader at this moment.” …
President Biden
Do you think it's been an adjustment for him to become the leader?We talk about his own sense of himself.And in a lot of cases, we hear that he thinks he had the right answer on Afghanistan during Obama, and then the Afghanistan withdrawal and the fiasco and the families yelling at him.What is, for Joe Biden becoming president in a moment like Afghanistan and the Afghanistan withdrawal, does it change him?Who is he in that?
The Afghanistan withdrawal, it must be a terrible experience for him, because it's a moment at which he should be able to say, “I was kind of right about this, folks.I was always skeptical of American involvement in Afghanistan, certainly on the scale that it took on.I was always the one who was saying, ‘What are we trying to achieve here?’I was always the one who was against pouring more and more resources into it.”He actually has a pretty good record on this.
So you would think, in a normal political circumstance, if he were a senator, he could stand up and say, “Well, I told you so.”He could get a lot of kudos out of that, right, couldn't he?And said, “Well, actually, Joe Biden was kind of right about this stuff.”Instead, he's president, and he has to own it.He can't go out and say, “This was all a terrible mistake, and I told you so,” because nobody's interested.You're president.You've got to deal with the withdrawal and the consequences of the withdrawal and the way that's been done.
It largely was not his fault.He inherited that situation.But talk about a very, very quick confrontation with exactly what it means to be president and suddenly to be the face of a debacle and nobody cares whether you made that fiasco happen or not.It's your fiasco, because you're president. …
So yeah, I mean, that, I think, was probably the moment when the reality of being President must have really hit him.
Would Biden Run Again?
Help me understand that Joe Biden facing that choice of whether to run for a second term, what he's seeing, and who this guy we've been talking about is, in the decision that he'll make.
Logically, if this were logical, Joe Biden was in a great position to be a one-term president, right, to say, “Everybody understood this was a moment of crisis.I sent out the signals when I was running to say I will be a bridge to a new generation.Well, you kind of knew what that meant.I was preparing the ground for other people to come after me.I have these fantastic accomplishments, so I can retire saying, “Well, I did nearly as much in one term as some presidents have done in two terms.’”And he could say that with some justice.“And I'm getting old.” …
This is not like Lyndon Johnson who has to abandon the presidency because of the Vietnam War and all these terrible things happening.It's not like Nixon having to resign.It's nothing like that at all.It's just saying, it's kind of a natural feel to this, right?“There's a cycle here.It's come to a point.I would probably be too old at the end of a second term, so I'm graciously stepping down.”And everybody would have said, “What a great guy.Look at these achievements he has.”It would have seemed, to most people, logically, to be a natural last chapter.
So I think we have to ask the question, why is that not enough for him?Why does this sense of enough not really have any purchase on the way he feels?And I think you can't remove this idea that he had in his head that the Bidens should be some sort of dynasty, that it should go on into the future.
Of course he knows that's been thwarted.He knows Beau died.He knows that the hope of doing that has met the most awful end.But I think somewhere in his head, there's still this sense that, if he cut his presidency short, as he would see it, it was sort of not properly fulfilling that desire.And I think there's also the sense that he does have a chip on his shoulder.He feels that he's somebody who's been underestimated, who's been thwarted, who's been mocked, and who hasn't been taken seriously enough.
I think the scarring experience of the way Obama treated him has to be playing out now, which is, “I did my eight years purgatory,” as a good Catholic, he will think.“As vice president, I got to have an eventually—and you're not going to exile me from heaven now.I have to do the full eight years.I have to fulfill this thing.”And I think it's not so much a political calculation as sort of emotional necessity for him.
And death?He looks gaunt.He's old.There has to be—in the minds of voters, they're grappling with it.It's haunted him his whole life.How does that play into this decision?
The rather difficult irony, I think, is that death helped him when he was running for president the first time, because there was so much denial going on about the pandemic, about the grief that people were feeling.And the sense that Biden contained that and embodied it actually, I think, was quite potent.There was a dignity to Biden's grief that echoed the needs of ordinary Americans at that moment.
I think death is playing for the other side now.I think the possibility of Biden's death in office is on the agenda.He can't face it or talk about it.Nobody around him can face it or talk about it.But voters are going to be thinking about it.And you can say that this is terrible ageism, that it's wrong.Maybe it is.But just saying it's wrong doesn't mean it's not there.And he looks like an elderly man, because that's what he is.There's nothing shameful about that.There's nothing—you know, it's just life.This is what happens to the body.This is what happens to the mind.This is the way the human life cycle plays out.
And when you're towards the end of that human life cycle, everybody knows what the destination is.And so the hauntedness that was there the first time, which I think kind of deepened the sense of who Joe Biden is and gave him, in a way, more substance, I think this time it somewhat diminishes the sense of who he is.And I think a really fascinating question is how is he going to deal with that.
There is no point in denying it.… There's no point in just denying this and saying, “If you keep raising it, you're just being ageist, and it's very unfair.”Yeah, sure, fine.But that's not going to help.The only way to deal with the age issue is to be up-front about it to actually—just to stop the thing of trying to run when you can't walk, as it were, trying to enact some sense that “I'm really not as old as I look.”Yes, you are, and that's who you are.And that's part of the package.That has to be part of the conversation around the next period of American history.
One way or the other, America is going to have a president in his 80s, and that has consequences.And it has practical consequences for the way the office of the presidency works, but it also has generational consequences for how Americans see themselves.One of Biden's problems is that he, perhaps unfairly, but he is the American president, so you become a lightning rod for things that are out there and that are not otherwise articulated.
And there's a great deal of generational resentment in America, because the American dream has stopped.And the American dream was this intergenerational machine where my kids' lives are going to be a bit better than mine, and I have that expectations, and their kids' lives are going to be better than theirs.And that's the whole immigrant dynamic that Biden has embodied and has spoken about and has tried to tap into.
But that's stopped.That is not what's happening in America right now.You have a generation of people who are poorer than their parents, whose expectations are lower than their parents'.And that's a very profound thing to have happen in America.It's of historic consequence.And because Biden represents the older generation, he's going to be a kind of lightning rod for some of that resentment.
You might reasonably say, “Well, why isn't Donald Trump the lightning rod, since he's not much younger?”Logic never applies to Trump.Trump has some way of deflecting so much, all of these kinds of questions, and he doesn't seem as old as Biden does for some reason in people's heads.
So it's going to be there, and Biden is going to have to confront it.I think he's going to have to confront it personally.He's going to have to show people how he governs.People don't know what happens behind the scenes, where everybody says, “Oh, oh, look.In government, he's really functioning very well.He's a good president.He's a good leader of the team.”Well, you have to show us that.There's no point in just having somebody briefing The New York Times about it anonymously.The American public needs to see this.I don't know how you do that, but you've got to do it. ...
As we take stock of his life, and we've talked about the decision points along from stuttering to staying in the Senate to running, here he is—it's another decision point.… What are the stakes for Joe Biden, for the country, in that moment?How do you evaluate that guy who's looking at his poll numbers and making that decision, and how big a moment that is in his life and for the country?
… There's a way in which Biden is so obviously right, that this election is one of the most important in America's history.It really matters very profoundly to America and to the world who's going to get elected.
So with the stakes so high, it means that Biden is putting an enormous bet on his own instincts for survival.He sees himself as someone who comes through immense challenges.And that's true, right?He has survived terrible things in his life that most of us would dread ever happening to us.And we can all understand that, and we can understand how he feels.
Certain sense—oddly, because having been so vulnerable of invulnerability—“I've dealt with these things; I know I can stand it, and I know I can come out the other side.”And the question for America is, has that led him into certain kind of delusion?Does he think that because you can overcome immensely difficult moments in your own life, you can also, at his age and with his vulnerabilities, overcome immense challenges for the country, and be the person who leads the country through a crisis in its democracy which is of an existential nature?
Biden sees himself as someone who defies death, and he therefore thinks he can defy the death of American democracy.Whether he's right or wrong about that is going to be one of the biggest questions that America has faced, probably for a century.
My last question, the one we ask everybody on this film, on both sides, which is, what is the choice?What's the choice facing American voters in November, as you see it?
I think the choice facing American voters in November is really, is about whether or not America can survive as an optimistic democracy.Can it survive as a country which, for all its faults, believes that the democracy that was so unusual when it was founded here is a system which has a future in America and in the world?Because it can make people's lives better, ultimately, make them feel proud of themselves, give them a sense of dignity, give them a sense of purpose?Or does it become a country which is founded on despair, and on hatred, on a loss of faith, on an idea that everything has gone to hell in a handcart, and that it can only be confronted with anger, with division, with at least implicit authoritarianism?
There really is a kind of dividing line here, which is not just about policies—policies matter hugely—but is really ultimately about what do Americans think of themselves.Do they still have trust in the idea that the American experiment, which is one of believing that it's possible to have a democratic system that transcends divisions of race, class, gender ethnicity, religion, that there's something beyond all of that which is potent enough to keep us together and to make us think that we have common purpose, and we can achieve great things?Is that still viable?
I think probably more so than at any time since the 1860s, there's a real question mark over whether Americans really believe that.Do they really think that's the case?As an outsider coming here—and I’ve been lucky to spend a lot of time in America—you’re really struck by the desire for Americans to think well of themselves.And that's a really good thing.It's not just sort of all this kind of hubris of exceptionalism.There's a sort of decency in thinking we want to be good people.
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Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation; Park Foundation; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. Web Site Copyright ©1995-2025 WGBH Educational Foundation. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.
