Washington: Champ the measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down, but how quickly he gets up. Joe Biden, the Democratic President of United States of America, would repeat these words of his father, perhaps suitable for his own life of tragedies and triumphs. 77-year Biden is a familiar face to many Americans, having spent decades in Washington, and two terms in the White House with Mr Obama.
Born on Nov. 20, 1942 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Biden was from an Irish Catholic family of four siblings. At the age of 10, he moved to New Castle, Delaware with his family, where his father worked as a car salesman. Biden attended the University of Delaware from 1961 to 1965, where he earned a bachelor’s degree with a double major in history and political science. Biden went on to attend the Syracuse University College of Law and received his Juris Doctor in 1968. The next year, he was admitted to the Delaware Bar. After practicing law, Biden pursued a career in politics and was elected to the U.S. Senate at age 29 in 1972.
While in the Senate between 1973 and 2009, Biden, the longest-serving U.S. senator in Delaware’s history, served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and later as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
But Biden has been forced to endure personal tragedies along the way. Just weeks after he was first elected senator, he lost his first wife, Neilia, and baby daughter, Naomi, in a car accident in 1972. He famously took the oath of office for his first Senate term from the hospital room of his toddler sons Beau and Hunter, who both survived the accident.
His first presidential campaign in 1987 was short-lived as he was accused of plagiarizing a speech of a British politician. He considered joining the game again four years later, but found it impossible for him to raise enough campaign fund.
In 1988, just months after he ended his first presidential bid, Biden suffered two life-threatening brain aneurysms. At the time doctors told him a White House campaign may have killed him.
He also campaigned for the party’s 2008 nomination, but dropped out after not attracting widespread support. He was ultimately chosen as Obama’s running mate and went on to serve as the right-hand man of the first black president in U.S. history.
In May 2015, Biden received a shock when his oldest son, Beau Biden, died of brain cancer. That death put Biden’s political career on hold. It was only five years later that Biden embraced his tragic history and said it helped him pave a path forward and find purpose.
Biden told his supporters that he hopes to further what he and Obama accomplished from 2009 to 2017, especially concerning healthcare and the climate crisis. Biden hopes to add advancements to the Affordable Care Act and opposes Medicare For All.
Biden supports free college education, same-sex marriage and has shown major support for the middle-class working Americans. Biden has also expressed his support of a higher tax on wealthy Americans’ income and for increasing tax relief for middle-class families.
In his decades-long White House quest – Biden has run twice before – the optimist from Delaware maintains he can shift the tone in the United States from anger and suspicion to dignity and respect.