Predicting Character (again): The Jocularity of Joe Biden

Okay, that WAS the title was I going to use back in 2015 for the 2016 Presidential campaign. Gods, the time flies...

It's been almost four years since then, so has anything really changed for Joe Biden? In terms of biography, his career is something that reaches back as far as 1974 (!) and covers a lot of ground. If we can refer to Evan Osnos' New Yorker article on him from 2014 (highlighting character traits):

Over the years, Biden has acquired a singular place in the pop culture of American politics. In a White House that privileges self-containment, Biden ambles between exuberant and self-defeating. He was barely in the West Wing before the Onion declared, in a headline, “shirtless Biden washes trans am in white house driveway,” establishing a theme—“Amtrak Joe,” the hell-raiser at the end of the bar—that is so enduring that it obscures the fact that he is a lifelong teetotaller. (Too many alcoholics in his family, he says. He grew up sharing a room with his mother’s brother, and recalled of the experience, “Even as kids, we noticed Uncle Boo-Boo drank a bit heavily.”)

Instead of raging against the indignities of the Vice-Presidency, Biden luxuriates in the job. Perched in his chair during the State of the Union address, peering down on his former congressional colleagues, Biden makes a pistol out of his finger and thumb, and blasts away, winking and gunning with no evident irony... The full package—the Ray-Ban aviators, the shameless schmalz, the echoes of the Fonz—has never endeared him to the establishment, but it lends him an air of authenticity that is rare in his profession. It has also produced a whiff of cult appeal, such that his image now has more in common with Betty White than with John Boehner. In May, after a teenager invited Biden to her prom, he replied with a corsage and a handwritten note encouraging her to “enjoy your prom as much as I did mine.” On Twitter, people went affectionately berserk.

Other than the President, nobody in the White House attracts more divergent public appraisals than Biden. In a column before the 2012 election, Bill Keller, the former executive editor of the Times, urged Obama to drop Biden as a running mate and replace him with the Secretary of State at the time, Hillary Clinton. (The campaign studied the idea, too, until polls showed that it would make no difference.) ...That summer, a survey by the Pew Research Center and the Washington Post asked people to come up with a single word to describe Biden; the most frequent responses, nearly equal in number, were “good” and “idiot.” Republicans rejoice in casting Biden as the consummate pol, careless, blustery, and a fogy. “Vice-President Joe Biden’s in town,” Senator Ted Cruz said, at a dinner for South Carolina conservatives last year. “You know the great thing is you don’t even need a punch line? You just say that and people laugh.”

And, yet, in the final month of the campaign, Biden reminded everyone why he was on the ticket. After Obama’s disastrously muted performance in a debate against Romney, the Vice-President prepared to face his counterpart, Paul Ryan, the then forty-two-year-old Wisconsin congressman, who has the eyes of a foal. Onstage, Biden wore a lupine grin. He guffawed, taunted, and interrupted. (When Ryan said, “Jack Kennedy lowered tax rates and creates growth,” Biden cut him off: “Oh, now you’re Jack Kennedy!”) The theatrics drove some viewers crazy, but the campaign was thrilled; Biden had arrested the slide, and when Obama prepared for his next debate advisers reportedly told him to channel some of Biden’s pugnacious energy. In the months that followed, the President deployed Biden again, this time to Capitol Hill, where he tapped relationships built during thirty-six years in the Senate to strike a deal that averted the fiscal cliff one day before the deadline. By the end of 2012, the White House was extending him the ritual courtesy of hailing the power of its No. 2. A headline in The Atlantic asked, “the most influential vice president in history...?”

That last bit is a bit of a historical joke itself: Over the years, most Veeps had no influence at all, not until the Cold War against the Soviets where the chain of succession required better informed VPs. It is also a rebuke of the previous Veep ahead of Biden - Dick Cheney - who *did* wield incredible influence in Bush the Lesser's administration to where historians (and myself) consider Cheney a shadow President.

Back to the bio:

In contrast to Dick Cheney, Biden has made his mark by reinforcing the President’s supremacy, rather than maneuvering around it. “Cheney’s influence, while significant, was always overstated, and Cheney got dialled back as the Administration went further along,” David Rothkopf, the editor of Foreign Policy, said. “While Biden has been a strong voice on foreign policy, it has never been asserted, as it was about Cheney, that he was trying to advance his own agenda. Even when there were differences of opinion, Biden was seen as being loyal and supportive of the President...”

Leon Panetta recalled listening to Biden work the phone at the White House: “You didn’t know whether he was talking to a world leader or the head of the political party in Delaware.” Biden has an inexhaustible appetite for “the connect”—the rope line, the hand cupped around the back of the head, the eye contact with a skeptic in the crowd. “He kind of brings them in and hugs them, verbally, and sometimes physically,” Secretary of State John Kerry told me. “He’s a very tactile politician, and it’s all real. None of it’s put on.” ...To a degree that is rare among politicians, Marttila said, “the process of meeting people energizes him.” Biden is such a close talker that he occasionally bumps his forehead into you mid-chat, a gesture so minor that it’s notable only when you try to picture Barack Obama doing the same thing.

The full Biden plays better around the Mediterranean and in Latin America than in, say, England and Germany. A former British official who attended White House meetings with Biden said, “He’s a bit like a spigot that you can turn on and can’t turn off.” He added, “For all of the genuine charm, it is frustrating that you do feel as if he doesn’t leave enough oxygen in the room to get your points across, particularly for those who are polite and don’t interrupt..."

Getting, and staying, “in the deal” is one of Biden’s favorite ways to describe relevance, and he has elevated the acquisition and maintenance of respect to the level of ideology. Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., is the son of a car salesman. His father had been wealthy as a young man, but business soured; vestiges of his brush with prosperity were a polo mallet in the closet and an acute sensitivity to signs of disrespect. Once, at an office Christmas party, the boss tossed a bucket of silver dollars onto the dance floor and watched the salesmen scramble to pick them up. “Dad sat frozen for a second,” his son wrote, in a 2007 memoir called “Promises to Keep.” Then “he stood up, took my mom’s hand, and walked out of the party,” losing his job in the process. Biden’s mother, Catherine Finnegan Biden, reinforced the hyper-alertness to status. “She told us, from the time we were little kids: Nobody is better than you,” his sister, Valerie Biden Owens, said. “And you’re no better than anybody else...”

There are also the tragedies in Biden's personal life that define a lot of the habits he sticks with to this day:

In the weeks before he was sworn in, Biden worked out of a borrowed office in Washington. His sister was helping him get organized. One day, his brother Jimmy called and asked to talk to her. She turned white. “There’s been a slight accident,” she said. Biden sensed something in her voice; he felt it in his chest. “She’s dead, isn’t she?” he said. (His wife) Neilia had been driving with the kids to get a Christmas tree when their station wagon was hit by a tractor-trailer. Neilia and (daughter) Naomi were killed. Beau, age three, and Hunter, age two, were hospitalized. Biden said later that he considered suicide. He could not imagine taking his seat in the Senate, but senior members urged him to try Washington for six months. “They had lost their mom and their sister, so they cannot lose their father, and that’s what made him get out of bed in the morning,” Valerie said. She moved in and lived with her brother and the boys for four years. He never moved from Wilmington. And so began the ninety-minute commute each way on Amtrak, the ritual that would become a fixture of his life...

(After disastrous behavior from his first Presidential campaign and bad choices during his Senate Judiciary Chair duties) Biden worked hard to rebuild his reputation. In 1994, he led the effort to pass the Violence Against Women Act, which heightened protections against abusive partners, and helped him win back the support of women’s groups. Biden always liked the old bipartisan courtesies in the Senate, and he mourned the arrival of more combative members who “really had no respect for the institution of the Senate,” he told me. “By that, I mean they wanted to make it the House. I’ll never forget the first time I heard someone on the floor of the Senate refer to the President as Bubba.” Biden’s friendships were so varied that he was the only senator who was asked to speak at funerals for both Strom Thurmond, the former segregationist, and Frank Lautenberg, the New Jersey Democrat, who called Biden “the only Catholic Jew...”

Biden became an envoy to an implacable Congress. David Plouffe, one of Obama’s political advisers, saw Biden’s mission as a question: “Where is the deal space?” His belief in compromise over ideology put him closer to the President. “They really have the same mind-set there,” Plouffe said. Biden held on to his locker at the Senate gym, where he liked to kibbitz. He coached Sonia Sotomayor before her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. When the White House needed to pass the $787-billion stimulus plan, Emanuel asked Biden to call six Republican senators. He got yes votes from three of them, and the bill passed by three votes. He became a willing deal-maker. Too willing, in the eyes of Harry Reid and other Democratic lawmakers, who faulted Biden for not driving a harder bargain in the fiscal negotiations...

There's a lot more at Osnos' biography, so I encourage you to read the whole thing.

So how does this translate for Crazy Joe Biden?

Joe Biden - Vice President, Delaware
Positives: Extensive, comprehensive political career from nearly 30 years in the Senate to Vice-Presidency. Knows as much about legislative procedures as anyone on the ticket (definitely way more than trump). Has staked out the "Establishment" Centrist position and the "Moderate White Male" role in the horse race, giving him a comfortable portion of the voter base (this is why most of the other moderate White guys running for the Dem ticket are polling under 2 percent). Is already well-positioned to appeal to non-party voters that trump is clearly losing through his partisan (and racist) governance. Is the biggest defender - outside of Obama himself - of the ACA/Obamacare reforms which many Americans now view as the baseline of healthcare (which makes him a more comfortable vote vs. the more radical Dems promoting wholesale changes with "Medicare For All"). Has a personal biography - personal brush with death, dying son which motivates Biden's healthcare ideas - that few Republicans can mock (trump will still try). Basically he's running on his association with Obama who is STILL the most respected man in the United States, and while coat-tails are hard to prove this is a legacy campaign that can attract all the voters from 2012 that made states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin go Blue.

Negatives: This is his third serious attempt at the Presidency, and even on his third try is making gaffes and miscues that would have - and did - sunk his first two tries. Is seriously not a good campaigner on the national stage. Is running a Centrist bipartisan campaign during a primary when he OUGHT to be appealing to the more left-leaning voter base. Has openly stated he thinks once trump is out of the White House that the Republicans - even Obstructionist "Moscow Mitch" - will regain their senses and behave themselves (insert headdesking here). His platform boils down to "I'm not trump" (which also counts as a positive because there's at least 65 million people who will vote on that point alone). Does not necessarily flip any battleground states. Will get confronted on his age and personal health (even though he's barely older than trump), and is already showing signs of not keeping his facts straight.

Chances: Surprisingly steady. Where his off-color tone-deaf "jokes" - and willfully blind pandering to a bipartisanship that no longer exists - would have killed a lesser candidate's campaign, Biden's been coasting on two key traits: 1) Enough people know him from his Veep days serving with Obama to trust him, 2) and he's not leaning too far Left on the electoral spectrum to scare off the more moderate Dem voters who usually sit out these primaries. Even after getting pummeled by Harris in the first debate (where Biden lost support in the double digits) he regained those numbers and is back in the high 30s of the polling numbers. His second debate didn't create any further disasters, which for him is a major step forward and solidified his lead. Thing is, this is a long primary process and anything between now and March 2020 - when things heat up - could still crash his momentum.

Character Chart: Biden's more noticeable acts in office - both in the Senate and in the Veep's office - points to a Congenial nature. He's passed an extraordinary number of bills while in the Senate - benefits of a long career there - and during that time worked with a large number of both Democrats and Republicans to get them passed. That required knowing how to barter for votes, which requires either an Active-Negative view - like LBJ, who understood power and how to horse-trade for it - or a Passive-Positive view that required checking your Ego at the door and doing what was best to get the deals done.

This explains, partly, why he's convinced that a more bipartisan Senate/Congress is possible if he wins the Presidency in 2020: Biden still thinks of himself as a Senator, as part of a select clubhouse that despite political opposition and ambitions still share the same workspace.

It may explain why Obama picked him to serve as Vice-President: Biden was not only the counter-balance to Obama's weakness with inexperience in 2008, but Biden was a deal-maker who knew how Congress worked and could help Obama pass legislation like healthcare reform that required such skills. (The Congenial nature would also mask any personal ambitions that most politicians have, which gave Obama the room to grow into the role of national leader without a "mentor" hogging the same spotlight) Unlike the more ambitious Hillary - or most other choices Obama could have gone with as Veep - an Active-Positive like Obama could have lived with the likes of Biden without worrying about internal power struggles.

If you want the simplest, easiest-to-understand description of him: Joe Biden is the Democratic Party's answer to Ronald Reagan. The affable elder who can draw in a big tent of party voters and not upset the independent/moderate voters needed to make that tent bigger.

This explains why Biden's polling keeps leveling up instead of sinking down as the primaries drag on. Democratic voters, having been burned in 2016 by the loss of moderate-leaning Midwest/Rust Belt voters who flipped from Obama to trump, may be terrified of supporting more proactive, progressive options and want the most likable, most "electable" candidate they know. And they know Joe: Perceived in public opinion as the wacky uncle / comic sidekick to the more professional, cooler Obama. One of the more shocking polling numbers is the support among Black voters (especially Black women voters) that Biden currently enjoys. Even after getting burned on his busing stance by an actual Black Woman campaigning for the office, Biden is still the preferred choice because he's the more likable choice.

And this is in spite of the reality - something I've noted before - that Biden himself isn't all that charismatic or memorable.

Which is where the concerns kick in by the other factions within the Democratic party worried that Biden may win the nomination but then campaign poorly against a dark force like trump and lose that November. trump may not be an effective debater, but as 2016 proved the debates are almost meaningless anymore. What will matter to voters in the booths when the choice has to be made is "Will this person lead?" Granted, a lot of Americans have seen trump in action and know damn well he isn't leading he's destroying, but can Biden prove a better choice?

Biden is insanely conciliatory towards a Republican party that has shown harsh partisan behavior towards both the Democrats and the nation ever since Obama was sworn into office in 2009. There is every possibility that if the Republicans retain the Senate (and worse, win back the House) they can easily refuse to work with a Biden administration, even to the point of refusing to appoint his Cabinet and judicial nominations outright. This is not a position that can win over a lot of Democratic primary voters who have only known McConnell's obstructionist ways over that time period, but is also not a position that can win over moderate voters who want things done.

It's not that the voters will stick with trump in this situation, but that they might not show up to vote (again, but for slightly different reasons) at all. Which can hurt the down-ballot votes, etc. etc. Biden is not that safe a choice, unless the Democratic Party across the entire voter base is on board with him (and with the BernieBros already threatening to no-show against anyone NOT Bernie, this is a problem).

These are concerns, not great ones, but they need being answered well before the Convention should Biden win the primaries: He'll need to select a near-perfect Veep for the ticket one that can appease enough Progressives, and he will need to agree to a more left-leaning platform than he already has (which may mean agreeing to a Medicare-For-Many compromise), AND he will need to push hard (the whole party has to) on a campaign to flip enough Senate seats to avoid outright obstructionism. Unfortunately, Passive-Positive types like to work in a comfort zone, and some of these efforts may burst that particular bubble to where Biden won't campaign better than he needs to.

If he wins, Biden will also have to confront a lot of problems that most Passive-Positives aren't happy to confront. trump has already dismantled much of the operations of the Executive branch, probably to the point of a full rebuild of many agencies. Foreign policy issues have to fight through the toxic environments trump has created with almost all of our allies (on the bright side, those allies will be happy to get ANYBODY not trump and may forgive a few bumps while re-establishing relations). Biden would have to cope with the reality that his faith in a bipartisan Congress won't really be there when he starts working.

One other concern will be how he sets up his own White House. The potential for inviting in some of the more unsavory types - not only corrupt power brokers among Democrats but also corrupt Republicans Biden is likely to invite to create a diverse administration - will be high. While a lot of Passive-Positive Presidents (Grant, Harding, Reagan, Dubya) end up presiding over corrupt administrations - because they bring in friends or party hacks who abuse the President's trust - there is a good chance Biden won't rule over such an administration. There have been Pass-Pos leaders like Taft who worked as reasonable and relatively scandal-free leaders. A lot depends on who Biden brings with him, not only his Veep choice but also his Chief of Staff, his Cabinet, and any Congressional allies he relies on to get an agenda passed.

As a personal note: I've made a personal preference already - Harris, followed by Warren - but in all likelihood I will support the Democratic nominee in 2020. Biden will NOT worry me as much as this article may seem - I am throwing out there a lot of hypotheticals anyway - but I do worry about the poor campaign performance. At some point, the gaffes become inexcusable and the loss of general voter support could happen. I just want the best possible Democratic candidate winning in 2020. I'm not entirely sure that's Joe.

Next Up On Predicting Character: ...Sigh. Yes, I *have* to give him a fair shake...