Joe Biden
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (/ˌrɒbɪˈnɛt ˈbaɪdən/;[1] born November 20, 1942) is an American politician who served as the 47th vice president of the United States from 2009 to 2017 and represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate from 1973 to 2009. A member of the Democratic Party, Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president in the 2020 election. He unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and in 2008.
Biden was raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and New Castle County, Delaware. He studied at the University of Delaware before receiving his law degree from Syracuse University.[2] He became a lawyer in 1969 and was elected to the New Castle County Council in 1970. He was elected to the U.S. Senate from Delaware in 1972 when he became the sixth-youngest senator in American history. Biden was reelected six times and was the fourth-most senior senator when he resigned to assume the vice presidency in 2009.[3]
As a senator, Biden was a longtime member and eventually chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He opposed the Gulf War in 1991 but advocated for U.S. and NATO intervention in the Bosnian War in 1994 and 1995, expanding NATO in the 1990s, and the 1999 bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo War. He argued and voted for the resolution authorizing the Iraq War in 2002 but opposed the surge of U.S. troops in 2007. He has also served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, dealing with issues related to drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties, as well as the contentious U.S. Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. Biden led the efforts to pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Women Act.
In 2008, Biden was the running mate of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. As vice president, he oversaw infrastructure spending to counteract the Great Recession and helped formulate U.S. policy toward Iraq through the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011. His negotiations with congressional Republicans helped the Obama administration pass legislation including the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, which resolved a taxation deadlock; the Budget Control Act of 2011, which resolved that year's debt ceiling crisis; and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which addressed the impending fiscal cliff. Obama and Biden were reelected in 2012.
In October 2015, after months of speculation, Biden announced he would not seek the presidency in the 2016 election. In January 2017, Obama awarded Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom with distinction.[4] After completing his second term as vice president, Biden joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was named the Benjamin Franklin Professor of Presidential Practice.[5] He announced his 2020 candidacy for president on April 25, 2019, joining a large field of Democratic candidates pursuing the party nomination.[6] Despite poor showings in the first three state contests, Biden won the South Carolina primary decisively, and several center-left candidates dropped out of the race and endorsed him before Super Tuesday. Biden went on to win 18 of the next 26 contests. With the suspension of the campaign of Bernie Sanders on April 8, 2020, Biden became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for the presidential election
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was born on November 20, 1942, at St. Mary's Hospital in Scranton, Pennsylvania,[8]:5 to Catherine Eugenia "Jean" Biden (née Finnegan) and Joseph Robinette Biden Sr.[9][10] The first of four siblings in a Catholic family, he had a sister and two brothers.[8]:9 Jean was of Irish descent, with roots variously attributed to County Louth[11] and County Londonderry.[12][8]:8 Joseph Sr.'s parents, Mary Elizabeth (née Robinette) and Joseph H. Biden, an oil businessman from Baltimore, Maryland, were of English, French, and Irish descent.[13][8]:8 Biden's paternal third great-grandfather, William Biden, was born in Sussex, England, and immigrated to the United States. His maternal great-grandfather, Edward Francis Blewitt,[14] the child of Irish emigrants from Rappagh, Ballina, County Mayo, was a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate.
Biden's father was wealthy but had suffered several financial setbacks by the time his son was born. For several years, the family had to live with Biden's maternal grandparents, the Finnegans.[17] When the Scranton area fell into economic decline during the 1950s, Biden's father could not find sustained work.[18] In 1953, the Bidens moved into an apartment in Claymont, Delaware, where they lived for several years before again moving to a house in Wilmington, Delaware.[17] Joe Biden Sr. later became a successful used car salesman, maintaining the family's middle-class lifestyle.[17][18][19]
Biden attended the Archmere Academy in Claymont,[8]:27, 32 where he was a standout halfback and wide receiver on the high school football team; he helped lead a perennially losing team to an undefeated season in his senior year.[17][20] He played on the baseball team as well.[17] Academically, he was a poor student but was considered a natural leader among the students and elected class president during his junior and senior years.[8]:40–41[21]:99 He graduated in 1961.[8]:40–41
He earned his bachelor's degree in 1965 from the University of Delaware, with a double major in history and political science,[22] graduating with a class rank of 506 out of 688.[21]:98 He impressed his classmates with his cramming abilities,[23] and played halfback for the Blue Hens freshman football team.[20] In 1964, while on spring break in the Bahamas,[24] he met and began dating Neilia Hunter, who was from an affluent background in Skaneateles, New York, and attended Syracuse University.[17][25] He told her he aimed to become a senator by the age of 30 and then president.[26] He dropped a junior-year plan to play for the varsity football team as a defensive back, enabling him to spend more time visiting her.[20][27]
He then entered Syracuse University College of Law, later saying he found law school "the biggest bore in the world" and that he pulled many all-nighters to get by.[28][23][29] During his first year there, Biden was accused of having plagiarized five of 15 pages of a law review article. He said it was inadvertent, because he did not know the proper rules of citation. He was given an F and required to retake a course. This incident was cited in 1987, when plagiarism accusations arose during his first run for president.[29][30] Biden received his Juris Doctor in 1968,[31] graduating 76th of 85 in his class.[28] He was admitted to the Delaware bar in 1969.[31]
Biden received student draft deferments during this period.[32] After completing his studies, the Selective Service System classified him as unavailable for service due to a history of asthma.[32][33]
He has had a problem with stuttering throughout his life, especially in his childhood and his early twenties,[34] and says he has helped reduce the problem by spending many hours reciting poetry in front of a mirror.[21]:99 But he continues to have problems with stuttering, and it has been suggested that this has affected his performance in Democratic debates during his 2020 campaign for the presidency.[35]
Negative impressions of drinking alcohol in the Biden and Finnegan families and in the neighborhood led Biden to be a non-drinker.
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