The FRONTLINE Interviews
Ted Kaufman
Biden Adviser
Ted Kaufman served as a U.S. senator from Delaware from 2009 to 2010. He was chief of staff to Joe Biden during his Senate career and served as adviser to Biden’s presidential campaigns.
The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Jim Gilmore on July 21, 2020. It has been edited for clarity and length.
This interview appears in:
TOP
Ted Kaufman
Chapters
Text Interview:
Highlight text to share it
Biden’s Early Political Career
Tell me first, when’s the first time you met Joe Biden?
I met him in 1972.He was a New Castle County councilman, which is our major county, but still a very small county.And he’d just been elected in 1970, in a year where the Democrats won practically nothing else.And so he was kind of a minor star because he’d won in an off year.And I met him several times.
But the first time I really met him and had a chance to talk to him was, I’d been involved in the governor’s race, and the convention was over, and the governor was going to win, and then two days later his sister, Valerie, called me and said, “Would you come down and talk to my brother about getting involved in his campaign?”So I went down.He had a law office.I went down to his law office, and we talked about—he asked me about getting involved in his campaign.
What convinced you to do it?
Well, it was interesting, because I started off by telling him, “There’s no way you can win.”Cale Boggs was the candidate for the Senate.He’d been a two-term senator, two-term governor, two-term Congressman.He’s beloved around the state.So I said, “You can’t win, but it’s really—I really agree with a lot of things you’re saying.”He was talking about balanced budgets, which was a whole new thing for Democrats.He was talking about the environment, which was a whole new thing for Democrats.He was talking about taxes and tax reform and a lot of issues I really agreed with.I said, “I will work for you because it’s really important that we get the message out there, but I can’t come into this thing saying that I think you’re going to win.”
So’72, I remember those days very well.A lot going on politically.The Vietnam War issue is hot.Civil rights is very hot.’68—we’re just out of ’68 when the demonstrations were happening and there were riots in the streets and such.Why politics for Joe Biden?
That’s a good question.I think he’d been president at practically every—when he was in middle school—I mean, high school and when he’d been at university, and I think even in law school, he’d been president of his class or leader in his class.He was just a natural.And I think the county council race was a big deal.I mean, he was running against a Republican, and again in a year in which no Democrats won.The whole state, from top to bottom, back then was Republican.It’s ironic, but right now it’s top to bottom, it’s Democrat.
So I think he just took it as a challenge.And then once he got into it, he’s a very competitive person, and so he—and he saw his way.From the very beginning, he saw his path to winning the Senate race.It was really quite extraordinary.He was quite confident.And it wasn’t—you know, it was a confidence based on an analysis and an idea on how to win.
Biden’s Early Commitment to Civil Rights
He writes about the fact that civil rights was one of the issues that motivated him at that point.It’s an audacious decision to run for that Senate seat.What was motivating him?He wasn’t an activist really, but you defined him as a guy who was a systems guy.Explain that.
Well, I think he was concerned about systems, but he was very much—he and I shared something in common.Both of us had been summer lifeguards in the inner city in primarily African American pools.I was in Philadelphia, and he was down there.And I think all the way through school he always had a close relationship with people of color.And so I think it was just natural; he just didn’t understand why this, you know, why it was such a—he understood it was a gigantic problem, but he didn’t agree to it.He was involved in things that weren’t like organization things, but things were—there was a restaurant in town that wasn’t integrated, and a lot of the sports guys in town, the football players, basketball players would go there.And he just convinced them to kind of stay away and, and really get the restaurant to begin to accept people, all the people.
You said that when he won, you were surprised, as were a lot of other people.But he did win.What were his hopes?What was he intending to do with that office?
Well, I think all the things he talked about in the campaign, the things that were really important.He wanted to do something about tax reform.He wanted to get the Democrats concerned about balanced budgets.He wanted to do things about civil rights.And one of his big issues was the environment.So he had a full set of issues that he talked about during the—it was a very issues-oriented campaign, a lot of information.And when you say that he couldn’t win, on Labor Day, there was a poll done for us by Pat Caddell, who was one of the top pollsters back then; he was Jimmy Carter’s pollster.And it came in Boggs 47, Biden 19.That’s on Labor Day.That’s with two months to go in the election.It just—he closed.It got very, very close.And then he won.
And I can remember—this is the honest to God truth—I can remember they had the reception in the Gold Ballroom in Wilmington, which was in the Dupont Hotel.Everything in Wilmington was Dupont.I worked for Dupont then.And they had this event, and when the numbers came in, I can remember, it’s clear as today, standing in that crowd, it was a—I was thinking, I will never, ever again believe that anything’s impossible.And I’ve looked at races for the last 50 years, almost 50 years, and I’ve never—no one’s ever come to me with a race that was as impossible to win as this race.
The Black vote in Wilmington, how important was the Black vote in Wilmington?And why did it come in overwhelmingly for Joe Biden?
Well, I think a lot of it—remember what had happened in Wilmington, what happened in Wilmington, where we had a governor who during, when they had the riots here, set up for the National Guard to be on the streets of Wilmington for an entire year with bayonets, with the National Guard with bayonets.So I think the Black community kind of went strongly for all the Democrats.I’m pretty sure he led the ticket.There was just a natural—from the very beginning, people knew, people of color, people who were not wealthy, people who were poor and the rest of it, they immediately figured him out.It was—it’s really quite extraordinary, the way they figured him out.
And I can remember, even in the ’70s, we used to travel—like ’75, ’76, ’78, he’d only been a Senator for two, four, six years, we’d be in some airport some place and someone would come up to him, a baggage handler or a ticket agent or an attorney or something like that, and say: “You’re Joe Biden.You know, I really want to tell you, we really appreciate what you’re doing.”They were always—the community is always good about figuring out that he was—he didn’t have to kind of figure out where he was on their issues.He just knew instinctively where to go on the issues.
Biden’s Personal Approach to Politics
One other thing is, politics for him, this race now, that race back then in ’72, it’s very personal.It’s person-to-person.Explain that about him and how he views politics.
Well, Delaware is a retail politics state.We have like 800,000.I think we had only about 500,000 or 600,000 back then.And it’s a state—that’s how he won.He literally won by personal contact with people all across the state, and then building on that personal contact.I can remember we did a poll in 1978 and something like half the people in the state thought they had met him personally, which is absolutely, totally, completely impossible.But one of the things is you meet someone, and he always made an incredible impression on people.I can remember even before I was working for him, people would say, “I met that Joe Biden,” and they remembered who he was; they remembered about him.He just has a natural way.People know—I think it may be an empathy, kind of a shared experience that he had with people.He could immediately kind of find some common ground to talk about.
And one last thing about it.The way that campaign was run—Val’s involvement, Biden’s wife Neilia’s involvement, his mom’s involvement, the family involvement.How was that campaign run, and how unusual and how winning a way it worked?
Oh, it was exactly.And Valerie turned out to be a great campaign manager.And everybody in the family worked, and they were incredibly well-organized.There used to be—we used to have these coffees during the weekdays in a lot of communities, because a lot of women weren’t working; they were stay-at-home moms.So you could literally put on two or three or five or six coffees a day with about 35, 45, 55, 65 women and actually meet with them for 45 minutes to an hour.They were very, very well-organized.His mom and dad really ran him.Jimmy Biden raised the money.Frankie Biden was a sports star in the state; he got people involved.Valerie was a teacher at Friends School, which is normally a Republican area back in those days.They got those people involved.
And then the biggest thing that happened was, starting on Labor Day, we’d start on every Saturday, we would deliver statewide a tabloid newspaper.And it was absolutely incredible.And so people would come out on Saturday morning, and there would be their normal newspaper plus this tabloid that had been put together that laid out what he was, what he felt about the issues, and things like that.It was incredibly—but the thing was, it was his personal contact.He was going to shopping centers and people meeting him, and meeting the family, saying—you know, it really is true, you meet the family, you say, “Whoa, this is really a good person; I think I’m going to take a look at her brother.”
Biden’s Family Tragedy
He’s certainly riding high at this point.He’s won an amazing race.He’s got an amazing family.He’s got an amazing wife and kids.But things turn very dramatically.Talk a little bit about late December and what happened, how you found out about it, and how it changed everything.
Well, I mean, it’s fair to say he was 29 years old.He was only the third or fourth youngest senator in the history of the country.He had a wonderful family, a wonderful wife.Neilia was incredible on the campaign.A new—a little girl.Neilia used to travel and was a surrogate for him.Just a wonderful family.And then he was down in Washington, literally setting up his staff, and he got a call.And Neilia was literally bringing home the Christmas tree, with the kids in the car, the three kids in the car.And they got hit by a tractor-trailer, and Neilia and Naomi were killed, and Hunter and Beau were put in the hospital.It was—it was—again, terrible things happen to lots of people, but in my lifetime, I’ve never seen anyone that had such a series of just incredibly terrible things happen to them.
When was the first time after the accident that you saw him?What was he like at that point?He’s written and others have written about the fact that there was a real good chance that he wouldn’t become a senator.Tell me what he was like when you first talked to him after the accident.
Well, it was just devastating.And the memorial service was—I mean, he was just absolutely in such incredible pain, I mean, like physical pain from what went on.And then the boys were in the hospital, so he spent time in the hospital.No, genuinely, he was not going to become a senator.There’s no doubt in my mind that he just said, “The boys need me too much.”It wasn’t like it was now where you have virtual communications.He said: “The kids were in the hospital.I can’t go down to Washington and go to work down there when the kids are still in the hospital, and even after the kids came home.”So he genuinely was not going to serve in the Senate.
And then Valerie came in and took care of the kids.And then the senators were wonderful.They were—Mike Mansfield was the speaker—majority leader, and Ted Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey and Fritz Hollings, they just really came and said to him, “Look, you know, try it, try it; try it for six months and see how it would work.”And then what he did was, back then there were no cell phones obviously, there was no phones on trains, there were no—you know, there were coin machines, coin phones.So what he basically did is—he didn’t ride the train in the beginning.What he did was, the only way you could communicate was you got a—they had these phones, mobile phones in automobiles.And they used to fill—they used to fill the whole trunk.And so we had a car and would drive back and forth to Washington, and he’d be on—so the kids, anytime he—he would never be out of communication with the kids.And later on he set it up so that the kids would come to Washington on a regular basis.And when they came, they were with him the whole time.They couldn’t be with him when he was on the floor, but everything else, if he was a meeting or something.
I’ll never forget when he met with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and with Beau in his lap, and Kissinger, you know, who’s kind of—you think it might be hard for him to do, he—everybody handled it very, very well.
But all that said, it was—it was terrible.And the worst part was two weeks afterwards or a month afterwards, he’d come into the office, and he would be clearly be in just as bad shape as he was in December and just have, just—it was—he used to—Neilia had a ring, and he used to—that would be on his little finger.And boy, I’ll tell you what, how he ever made it through those days.
And then what happened was time passed, and he just kind of, you know, he never got over it, but he really kind of looked at it much more with love and the rest of that, and could carry on.But it was a rough—the first year, it was really, really—it was tough on him.
What was the ring on the finger?
Neilia had a little ring, a very small ring, and he put it on his little finger.I can remember when he’d come into work, it was kind of a, you know—he put it on there to remember Neilia, but those on the staff knew that he was going to have a bad day.
Biden as Conciliator
The fact that the senators were so great—he’s known as a guy who’s a conciliator, somebody who works both sides of the aisle, and an institutionalist, someone who loves the Senate.How did some of that mold him into the guy that he became—the conciliator, the man who worked on both sides?
Right.I think—I really do think it was a natural.It was like more, I guess nature, a lot of nature and some nurture.But he always, from the first time I knew him, had a way.He’s very, very smart, and especially in kind of trying to find—you know, some people have this incredible talent, and he has it, to find kind of the path through the mountains: How can we sit down on issues we really don’t agree with?I saw him do it time and time again.It was almost, it was remarkable.He’d sit down with someone that he didn’t agree with and sit there, and the combination of being very smart and also being willing to sit for hours and work on something and find where the common ground—I can remember when Jesse Helms came to the Foreign Relations Committee, and the chemical weapons treaty was up.And Jesse Helms was a very conservative senator, very conservative, and very opposed to the chemical weapons treaty.And then Sen. Biden, they literally sat for hours and days going through the chemical weapons treaty line by line, and in the end, they came up with something, and Helms endorsed it.
And the one thing that people sometimes say, I never saw him compromise on principle.It’s not like he would sit down and compromise some principle he had.I’ve never seen him compromise a principle that he has.So he was able—but he was able to do it because people—one of the big things about how the Senate works and how business works in my experience of businesses, one of the most important thing is trust.When you’re sitting across the table from somebody, can you trust them?And he got the reputation, justifiably deserved, that he was somebody you trust.If you made a deal with Joe Biden, it was a deal.He used to say it would be a Biden deal and that was it, and he would stick through it, even if things got rough.
What happens a lot of times, especially with freshman members of Congress, is they sit down, and they do a deal, and they haven’t really thought it all out.And then there’s a piece of it that just doesn’t work, and they go, “I can’t; I can’t hold my deal.”Joe Biden, you’ll never find anyone that says they had a deal with Joe Biden and he didn’t live up to it, no matter how painful it got.
And this rap he got in the primaries in the past and that certainly Trump will hit him with probably is that he would work with segregationists.
Right, exactly.You know what the best line on that is?You know who said he was absolutely right?John Lewis.John Lewis said, “I work with segregationists.”The idea that you would go down and you would operate without working with segregationists—because you have to remember, back in those days, the South was all Democratic, but they would also—they would reelect our senators.So when you looked at the chairs of the committees with all the Congress and committees, Congress at work, you’d look at where all the work was being done, it was in the committees.And the chairs in the House and the Senate were all Southerners, and they all had, you know—they were for segregation.
So as a matter—look, Ted Kennedy, everybody would say, “We’re going to figure out what it is we can agree on.”And that’s what it’s all about.One of the things that people really—not people.Most people understand this.But there’s a lot of vocal people on all sides who just don’t understand the principle of how you get things done, that you don’t compromise your principles, but you have to kind of find a middle ground to really make things happen.
Biden’s 1987 Presidential Bid
Let’s jump up to ’87 and the running for president.Why then?Did he have a honed message?What was his purpose at that point?
What happened was, about—everywhere he went, he was like the major speaker at all the Democratic dinners around the country, and people loved him, and people invited him back.
So what happened was, all this built up, and so we said, OK.We really sat down, the family and the key people around him, and said, “Let’s give it a try.”We said, we’re going to go out; we’re going to go out and raise money.We’re going to get started.We’re going to go to Iowa.We’re going to go to New Hampshire.We’re going to do the rest of it.But—and the idea was that at anytime we could step out.We were young, you know?
And by the way, did very, very well early on in the process.Did very well in Iowa.Did very well in New Hampshire, which in a lot of ways was our undoing because then what happened is that the—our opponent, Democratic opponents and the White House, decided that he was doing too well.And so they really went after him.And I don’t—I will believe till the day I die, nobody was trying to knock him out of the race.They were just trying to knock him back a little bit.I mean, there were Democrats who put out stuff.In fact, the major piece of attack was from Mike Dukakis, who ended up getting the nomination.So—and so we were surrounded.
He could do one of two things.We were in the middle of the Bork nomination, which was, I think most people would say if you follow the Supreme Court, one of the most important nominations in the history of the country.Definitely important.And <i>The New York Times</i> was calling it the first presidential primary, which is another reason why people went after him, because they wanted to slow him down because they knew he was going to get a lot of the Bork hearing.
And so essentially what happened, all these charges came, and essentially he had to decide, to make the decision: “I can do one of two things.I can stop Bork, go out to Iowa and New Hampshire and fight this thing,” because it was an hour-by-hour thing, “or I can stay and do Bork.”And I think it was pretty clear that he felt his responsibility was to stay and do the Bork nomination.And we ended up defeating Bork.And I think really changed the Supreme Court.Eventually it kind of caught up with us, but at least for a number of years the court was still the way it used to be.
The [Neil] Kinnock speech, it drew him in.It said something that he appreciated.He always—usually in speeches he said it was the Kinnock speech.It was that one speech where he didn’t say it.But what about that Kinnock speech drew him to want to use it?And then tell us how it was used against him and how you guys felt about that.
Sure.Well, basically he agreed with Kinnock.Kinnock was—I mean, if you listen to the Kinnock, it’s a lot of the same ideas that he had back then about how things should go.And basically, there were like—he gave that speech time and again.He gave it like 50 times, and in every one, he attributed it to Kinnock.And what happened was, he was doing the Bork nomination.We were flying out to Iowa.It was a debate in Iowa.He’s flying out to the debate in Iowa.He didn’t do any debate prep.He literally—on the plane were two staffers, and they were going over the Bork thing.And he arrived in Des Moines for the debate.I’m pretty sure it was in Des Moines.And the staff person there, he said, on this debate, at the end, you had to have like a three-minute closer.And he had no three-minute closer done, so he said to the staff person, “What do you think I ought to do for a close?”And he says, “Why don’t you do Kinnock?”So he got up there and he gave the speech, and it got to the end, last three minutes, and he gave Kinnock, but he did not attribute it to Kinnock.
But the thing that was disturbing about it, personally disturbing, was Dukakis, I thought that was—he knew it, he knew that he had attributed it all the other times.But really, it was the press who were covering the campaign who didn’t, who did not talk about the fact that he attributed.They had heard him time and time and time again attribute it.But it’s a much better story to just present it like that.So that was really—that was—frankly, that was the most disturbing part of the whole thing.
The Clarence Thomas Hearings
Let’s talk about the Thomas hearings and Anita Hill just for a second.He’s attempting to be fair to all sides; it’s quite apparent.The way the reporting goes is that it kind of blew up in his face because he didn’t seem to—he was given the rep that he wasn’t careful enough about how he dealt with the issues or whatever.What’s your overview of what he was trying to do and why it became somewhat of a political headache for him afterwards?
Well, first off, chairman of a committee is not a dictator.A chairman of a committee, Senate committee is, you know, it’s surrounded.And half the committee, or almost half the committee in this case, because the Senate was close back then, are put up by people of the other party.So the idea—it’s not like you can go into a meeting and say, “We’re going to do this” or, “We’re going to do that.”But you do—I’m not downgrading how important a chair is, but on the issues like that—and one of the problems we had, looking back on it, was, and even back then is, there were no women on the committee.You know, it was all men.There was a lot of back-and-forth, which I won’t go into, about Anita Hill and what happened with Anita Hill and how we got involved.
And there’s been a lot of things have been written after that that just are flat-out not true in terms of how he welcomed other witnesses to come forward.You know, there’s like this common myth that somehow there were these witnesses that wanted to come and support Anita Hill.And it’s literally not just my opinion; you can actually—it’s all in the record.He—there were two witnesses, and he told them, “You can come and testify.”In open court he said, “Look, if you’re willing to come up here and testify, then you can testify.”I mean, that’s on C-SPAN.And both of them said, “No, we’re not going to testify.”1
1
The New Yorker: What Joe Biden Hasn't Owned Up to About Anita Hill
So it was a very difficult situation, especially based on the makeup of the committee.And the biggest thing was, he wanted to be fair to Clarence Thomas.I mean, just because you’re not—he’s not like someone said, “Oh, Thomas is the enemy; therefore it’s OK; I can do anything to him,” which, by the way, there were a lot of people involved in that who had that approach.But his approach, some of the things that they were suggesting that he do, like a lie detector test for Clarence Thomas, which would have been—I mean, he’s totally opposed to lie detectors to be used in court cases; how could you do it to Clarence Thomas?
So it was—he was really working hard to be fair to both sides.And in the end, I think one of the really—out of every bad thing, something good comes.I think one of the really good things that came out of it is, in the next election, he went out and he said, “There’s going to be women on the Judiciary Committee.”And he did something that no senator’s ever done in the years I’ve been there, and that is—usually when you get a newly elected senator, you go and try to meet with the chair to get picked for the committee you want to be on.He flew out to Chicago and met with Carol Moseley Braun, like right after she was elected, and sat with her and said, “I want you to come on the Judiciary Committee,” and actually recruited her, and then recruited Dianne Feinstein to be another woman to come on the Judiciary Committee.And he got both of them to agree to do it.
Obama Selects Biden as His Running Mate
Let’s skip up to 2008.Obama picks Biden as his vice president.The natural question is, why?What did Joe Biden bring to the ticket, and then to the office of vice president?And also, while you’re at it, why did Joe decide, and how hard a decision was that to accept it?
Well, when it was first discussed, he was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.It’s like one of the greatest jobs in the world.It’s really challenging, and you’re really doing meaningful things and the rest of it.When they first came to him and Obama called him and said, “I want to consider you for vice president,” he said no.He said: “I do not want to—I do not want to be vice president.It’s not something— I’ve never—” and it was true.“I’ve never worked for anybody in my life.”I mean, he worked at a law firm when he got out of law school, but after that he set up his own law firm, and after that he was a senator for his whole life.So it was like the idea of working for someone else, it was a concern.It was a concern of mine that, you know, that since he’d never worked for anybody else, that would be a concern.
And he was not going to do it.I mean, there’s no doubt he was not going to do it.And we had another one of those family meetings and a few key people.And his mom, who was a wonder, a wonderful, wonderful woman, listened to the discussion.Then she said, “Well, Joey”—she called him “Joey”—she said, “Well, Joey,” she said, “you’re telling me that the first African American president in history thinks that you can help him get elected and you’re saying no?”Game, set, match, it was over.
So then what happened was, he said, “OK, I’m going to do it, but I want to make sure”—and he’d been close to Mondale.He helped Mondale prep for going down to see Carter because he was one of the first senators—he was the first elected official outside of Georgia to endorse Carter, so he was close to Carter and the Carter group, and so he knew Mondale and the rest of it, and he talked to Mondale about it.
And what he did was, he went down to meet with Obama, and he essentially said to Obama, “You know, here’s—I’d like to make a deal with you, and the deal’s this.”He said: “On every major issue, I want to be the last person to talk to you.Talk to anybody you want, but I want to be the last person to be able to talk to you.And then here’s the deal I make.You decide.You’re the president; I’m not the president.Once you decide what you’re going to do, I’m following you.I will follow you; I will support you.You’ll never hear anything of, you know, somewhere that Biden says something different,” which is a kind of a problem with vice presidents not doing it.And so—and he did, and he stuck up to it.
And you’ll hear stories about meetings and things that went on in meetings, but they’re by other people that are there.You’ll be hard-pressed.And one of the reasons why he and Obama were one of very few presidents and vice presidents that after four years, eight years, were still—let me put it this way—friendly.And if you go back, don’t have to go back to the names, but if you go back to the names, all the way back, the one I always remember is when they asked Eisenhower after his eight years was up, they asked him in an interview, “What did Nixon did for [you]?,” he said, “Give me two weeks, and I’ll come up with something.”
So—and here are two guys that made it through eight years of, starting out with the financial crisis and all the problems, Obamacare and the rest of it, made it through those eight years and came out as, like, bosom buddies.
Beau Biden
I’d like you to talk a little bit about his relationship with his son, Beau.Talk a little bit about that relationship and how important it was and sort of what Beau’s trajectory really was.
His trajectory was unlimited.People talk about people after they’re gone, and they—and it’s good they do.They look back, and they kind of overstate the situation.But Beau was an extraordinary—an extraordinary person.He was a very, very, very good person, which I know people that look down on politicians and the rest of it think, how can you be a politician and be really, really—he was really, really a good person.And he communicated it.
I can remember when he announced a member of the Supreme Court here, introduced him, and his—his kids had gone to the same high school that Beau had, and he said in the announcement, he said, “When my kids were out on a weekend with Beau,” he said, “I never worried about what was going to happen to them.”He said, “Everybody called him Sheriff Beau.”And he was just—he was a wonderful person.He was really smart.He was—we used to call him Joe Biden 2.0. He had—he was remarkable with people.Just look at how he did in Delaware, running for attorney general.
No, but—and by the way, he was not going to run for the Senate.I thought he should run for the Senate.I mean, I really thought the Senate was a natural—because I thought he was going to be president.I mean, again, that’s not some—it wasn’t like based on, oh, yeah, Harry’s going to be president.This guy, I mean, Beau had all the moves.But he was—he’d been attorney general.He said, “I want to be governor.”He says, “More action there for the things I care about.”And so he said, “I’m going to—I’m going to run for governor.”
And then, you know, then—then we got the diagnosis, and—ah…[Voice catches.] I mean, again, it was incredibly, incredibly, incredibly difficult and hard to get your head around that somebody as good as Beau, who did all the right things, that would happen to him.And the final indication of what a special person he was is—when it became pretty clear that we probably weren’t going to have a good outcome—this is the honest to God truth—he was more concerned about how his dad would take it than he was about dying.I mean, that is absolutely, positively—he said, “This is such a kick to my dad, with all the things that happened to him, and—”
And he went to his dad—a lot of people misunderstand; there was a lot of discussion about, you know, he wanted his dad to run for president.He never said for his dad to run for president.What he wanted for his dad was to stay involved.He just thought this could be the knockout punch.This could be the one where he just says enough’s enough.And he just kept saying to him, “You’ve got to stay involved.”And it almost was the knockout punch.I mean, it was really difficult.And I think one of the major reasons that Joe Biden made it through is because of the promise he made to Beau, that no matter what, no matter what, he would stay involved.
And he does get back up.Of course, he’s doing his vice presidential duties.He’s also throwing himself into work as he had done after Neilia had died, as a salvation to some extent.He’s even thinking of running for president.What happens in that period of time—he’s able to come back, but why he doesn’t run eventually?
Well, I mean, remember, Jill’s an incredible person.I mean, Jill is just, she is a very special person.It was a terrible blow for her, too, but he had her, and he had Hunter, and he had Ashley, and he had, you know, and the grandchildren.So that was all incredibly—and friends, people that cared about him.But—but he did, I mean, he literally, he threw himself into the job of being vice president.There was a lot of days that he, you know, that he didn’t because he couldn’t, but by and large, he just—he just got up.It was like, he just got up and went and did it.And it was, it—again, it’s an amazing thing, when you see it.It’s kind of, you can’t believe your eyes what’s going on.But it’s amazing that he was able—he and Jill were able to do it. …
Running for president … he couldn’t really begin to look at it until it was clear that the family was on board to run.By the time the family was ready to run, it didn’t take long to sit down with people that we’ve trusted and worked with over the years and new people and sit down, and there’s no way you can kind of put the pieces together.There weren’t enough days to really go to Iowa and do what you had to do in Iowa, go to New Hampshire and do what you had to do in New Hampshire, go out and raise the money and do all the things that you had to do.Basically, my approach was, if they gave us—instead of—if they gave us two more months, delayed the Iowa caucuses and the whole thing for two months, he would have been in it up to his eyeballs.But it was two months—too months too short.
So in a lot of ways, it was a really—in a lot of ways it was a blessing in that at that point it was a really, really easy decision once you got down and looked at the mechanics.And again, it’s an incredible advantage, because this was not our first rodeo.And so we knew what to look for; we knew who to talk to; we knew all those things.So pretty quickly we could get to the bottom of it, and the bottom was, it just wouldn’t work.
But is there some regret when Hillary Clinton loses and Donald Trump takes over?It’s been said many times, and I think even by him, that he thought he would have won against Donald Trump.And he sees Trump come in and disassemble many of the things that they had put together in the administration.Is there something tugging at his soul back then that wishes that he had run or that blames himself for not running?
No.I never saw it.Never saw a bit of it.It’s just not the way he is.He isn’t someone—he isn’t someone that kind of revisits decisions.Was he unhappy that he couldn’t run, based on his concern about Trump?Yeah, he was unhappy that he couldn’t run.But the other thing is, he’s a realist.I mean, it wasn’t close.It wasn’t like, well, let’s roll the dice on this one; we can take a chance.There just weren’t enough hours in the day.And so it was like—it wasn’t like, “Oh, I stood at the crossroads, and I picked the wrong road.”I’ve never heard him, ever, say that.
Biden’s 2020 Presidential Bid
OK, so let’s come to this race.2019, the vice president Joe Biden now decides that this is finally his moment.Why?Why now?He’s had a long, distinguished career.But he, of course, has experienced the changeover in politics in America and the coming of Donald Trump.Why is he running this year?
It’s really quite simple: He has always had what I call the face-in-the-mirror test.For him, he gets up in the morning, and some days he looks in the mirror and he’s got a big decision to make, and the decision is basically going to be something that’s really going to be hard or really going to be ugly or really something he doesn’t want to do, but the result is something that he really cares about.And I’ve been with him for almost 50 years, and when he looks in the mirror, you don’t want to be the one arguing that he not do it, because I’ve done that many, many times, where you just say, like running this last time.My job is to go through all the kind of worst, horrible things that can happen, the worst cases can happen, and—but to him, Trump—the idea that if he didn’t run and Trump won, and he’d have to live with that the rest of his life, it was just unconscionable.Just unconscionable.
…So that’s why he ran.It wasn’t like he wanted—this desire to be president.I mean, American people believe, and I’ve talked to how many of them in my lifetime, believe it’s always driven by some deep desire to ride in Air Force One and listen to “Hail to the Chief.”That’s not been my experience with presidential candidates.I mean, I don’t think Mitt Romney is built that way.I know John Kerry isn’t built that way.I know Jimmy Carter wasn’t built that way.Barack Obama’s not built that way.I don’t—you know, people run for president, and especially the ones who are successful, because they really think there’s something they can do to make the country better.And George W. Bush I think felt the same way—H. W. Bush, I mean. I don’t think— so basically, that’s why you run.You run because you care about the country, and you think you’ve assembled a bunch of ways to really help the country.
As you just talked about, he secures the nomination at a time that this country is under crises that we have not seen, I certainly have not seen in my lifetime: the COVID crisis; the civil rights debates going on in streets across America; the economy is in shambles again.Why is he the right man at this moment?The empathy and other things you just talked about, why is he the right man at this moment in time?
Well, first off because I think that the country’s going to need a dramatic change.I think that the president is the moral leader of the country.I really believe in the bully pulpit.And I taught at Duke Law School for 26 years, and I used “bully pulpit” all the time, and I never thought about the “bully” part of it.But I really think the bully pulpit’s important.I really think that the moral leader of the country—so I think a lot of the problems the country has start with the fact that the leadership has led the country in the wrong direction.I really do think that there’s less honesty in what goes on.
I think there’s a lot of things that people—short-termism, the short-termism is out of sight in terms of the president just inculcating in people, well, “I’m just worried about the next 15 minutes, and don’t worry about.”I’m not even talking about the issues, positions he’s taken and the corruption and the things that he’s done and the things he’s said and the way he deals with people and the way he gets up every morning.I think just having a president of the United States come in who has those values, so on day one, when they get up in the morning, they’re not going to get a tweet dividing the country, or 50 tweets.They’re going to have a president of the United States, every time he gets up to speak, he’s going to be figuring out how to put the country together.And I think that’s really a big first day, number one.
Number two is, one of the things that’s incredible they never kind of consider in the presidential debates is experience.If you were hiring a CEO for a corporation or the head of an organization, you’d say, “What experience have you had operating in this area?”And here he’s got 40 years of dealing with the federal government, of dealing with state and local.He knows the governors; he knows the—obviously he knows the senators and the congresspeople; he knows the world leaders.Just about every one of them he has a relationship with.
And he brings experience in terms of dealing with what these—what the issues are.And so he brings a certain amount of credibility.So on day one, you’re going to have a totally different kind of approach to the country, and you’re going to have a totally different kind of bully pulpit than what you have now.And I think the division in the country, the bad feelings in the country, you’ve got to attribute it to, to a large extent, to the efforts by the president of the United States to spend almost four years constantly vilifying the other side and constantly going after the side and constantly not taking responsibility for what he’s done.And that’s not Joe Biden.I’ve never seen Joe Biden take that approach in terms of the way he deals with things.He’s perfectly, perfectly willing to admit when he makes mistakes, which I’ve learned in business school is the first step towards success.He’s a manager.I mean, look at the management of the White House.I mean, he, Joe Biden, he’ll be able to fill up the White House with really incredibly qualified people that mirror America.It won’t be him sitting in a room with 20 white guys.He’s going to have people of color; he’s going to have all kinds of people involved in his presidency.He’s going to have plenty of people that are coming who want to come and be involved in what he’s doing.
So it’s going to be hard.Don’t get me wrong.It is going to be hard.The economy, COVID-19, on top of what Trump’s done over the last three and a half years, create some incredible challenges for the country.But I think if you really sat down and kind of did an analysis of what do we need after Donald Trump and deal with COVID-19 and deal with the—what kind of values do we need?What kind of experience do we need?How important is character to deal with what’s going to be these incredible difficulties?How about family?Somebody that really cares about family and, as I said before, cares about his faith, cares about honesty, cares about empathy.I think that’s what the American people are looking for.
Now, a lot of people like a lot of things about Trump, you know.He—he consistently gets hard support around 35%.But I also don’t think there’s anybody that can come in who can reach across to those folks in some way, at least not be in a situation, get up every morning, and alienating them.But the key is going to be putting together the people that support him and the people in the middle in the beginning.That’s going to be the main source of his government.
Latest Interviews
Latest Interviews
Policies
Teacher Center
Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation
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.
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.
