E-mail a friendSen. Joseph Biden
airdate August 8, 2007
Delaware's senior senator and a 2008 presidential candidate, Joe Biden chairs the Foreign Relations Committee and the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs. He's a constitutional scholar and adjunct professor at Widener Law School and widely recognized as an influential voice on terrorism, crime prevention, environmental protection and education policy. Prior to his election to the Senate, Biden practiced law and served on a local county council. Promises to Keep is his recently released memoir.
Sen. Joseph Biden
Tavis: Pleased to welcome Senator Joe Biden back to this program. The Delaware Democrat is of course seeking to become his party's presidential nominee in 2008. In the meantime, he gets to keep his day job, which includes his powerful role as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is also the author of a new book; his memoir. It's called "Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics." He joins us tonight from New York. Senator, nice to have you back on this program, as always.
Sen. Joseph Biden: It's great to be with you, Tavis.
Tavis: Let me start by asking you about that - I guess ruckus wouldn't be the wrong word - that AFL-CIO debate last night in Chicago. (Laughter) I see you survived. You got out of Chicago and you made it to New York. What'd you make of last night's conversation?
Biden: Yeah, I made it to New York. I tell you what - well, the most important thing was my Walter Mitty dream was to be a pro football player, and I made it to the 10 yard line on Soldier's Field. Man, it was worth it. It was worth the trip. No, it was an interesting debate, and it's always interesting to do - look, you know this better than I do - before a live audience.
The thing you worry about, though, is just being televised, and you tend to speak to the audience, which means that you're probably talking at a decibel level beyond what you should on television. But it was interesting; I thought it was a good forum.
Tavis: How do you think labor issues are going to play or not play, as it were, in this campaign, because there are a lot of people who think, with all due respect to last night's event, that labor issues just aren't ranked as high, don't get the respect, attention that they once did in America.
Biden: Well, they don't, but I think they're about to. Because what I think has happened, Tavis, is that as the labor unions have fallen, the middle class has dropped. There's a direct correlation. When labor was strong from the forties through the early seventies, the middle class grew and they got an equal share of the pie.
From '72 is this downward trend from 26 percent to 12 percent of the work force - the middle class dropped, as well. And it seems to me that what we keep forgetting is labor built the middle class, and so the other piece that's changed, I think, Tavis, is a lot of white-collar workers who took for granted all the rights they had from healthcare to work conditions, never giving labor credit for it, have now realized left to their own devices, corporate America is not as sweet and generous as they thought they were going to be. So I think there's a change in the mood, and I think labor is poised to be able to grow, not continue to wither.
Tavis: All right, from last night, let's move on to the text. The new book by Joe Biden, "Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics." I'm fascinated as to how you chose the title and what you mean by it, "Promises to Keep."
Biden: Well, I started writing this - this book is not about policy, it's not about my life in the Senate. It's about the lessons I learned and how those lessons made me who I am and what I believe. And I went back and I started off writing about a foreign policy text. I started - the first chapter, it was about Bosnia. And as I started looking at it, why was it that I believed that we could do what we did on Bosnia successfully, I realized it's all about basically keeping promises.
Keeping promises to yourself, keeping promises to the people you serve, and the country - the United States - keeping promises to what the rest of the world thinks of us. I write at the end of the book about my trip to Darfur, actually to Chad, to a camp of 30,000 women and children, primarily. Land in this godforsaken part of Chad which is just shale and desert - there's nothing else out there - and as I get off the plane, the dust is swirling.
We get off the back of this plane and there's a young African aid worker puts his hand out and says, "Thank you. Thank you, America, thank you for coming." He didn't see a middle-aged, rumpled senator getting off that plane. What he kind of saw was the Statue of Liberty. He looked at America for the promise we are. We are the promise to a lot of people, and we've squandered that in this administration.
And so it's about personal promises you keep to yourself, the promises you make as a professional, and the promises our country makes. And so initially the book was going to be - it was suggested by the publisher that the book be about get up. Because like you and others, I've gone through some fairly difficult times in my life, and my dad used to say, “The measure of success is not whether you get knocked down but how quickly you get up.”
But the more I thought about it, it's really about promises. Promises to yourself, and promises to the country. The country's promises.
Tavis: Not unlike many of us - and your story's quite remarkable, I want to get to it in a second here - you've learned about making promises and more importantly about keeping those promises. So much of that you learned from your family.
We'll talk about that in just a second but before I move to that so quickly, let me pick up on what you suggested a moment ago about what we have squandered in the world. And I guess the question is whether or not the damage to our reputation is irreparable.
Biden: No, it's not irreparable, because the values that make up this country are enduring. And I've been around for a while; I got to know most of these world leaders not because I'm important, because I came up with them. They were young parliamentarians when I was a young senator, many of them, and one of the things I'm convinced of, Tavis, and I think you are, too - the rest of the world is hungry - hungry - for America to return to its values and its principles.
It really worries them - it offends them that we're as strong as we are. They resent the fact that we're the essential nation. But the bottom line is, they know we are the essential nation, and I think they're just ready for a country led by someone who is going to lead with - who's going to be willing to listen to their problems, but also lead once again with our values and the things we stand for.
It's corny, but to the rest of the world we really are that shining city on the hill. And it scares the heck out of them that we've lost our way. So I think they're ready. I think they're ready if we reach out our hands to them. I think they're ready to cooperate.
Tavis: Speaking of values, we see the values that you believe in expressed by the kinds of public policy fights you've been, successes you've had down through the years. I want to start by asking you about your family. Tell me about your family and where you learned these values.
Biden: Well, I learned the family values from my grandfather's kitchen table. Sort of the foundation principle of life for my grandfather was keep your promises. I remember him telling a story with his buddies - they used to come back to my grandpop's house after 10:30 mass in this Irish-Catholic neighborhood we lived in, and the men would sit around and argue politics and sports, and the women would sit at the kitchen table, at the dining room table, drinking tea.
And my grandpop was a man of real rectitude, and remember there was a local party boss he liked and I didn't quite understand why he liked him. And he said, "Joey, you're wondering why Pop likes this particular guy, Packy." And I said, "Yeah, I kind of am. He was always in the newspaper for some bit of chicanery - hiring his brother-in-law, that kind of stuff. (Laughter)
And I couldn't understand it. He said, "Let me tell you the difference." He said, "You like Mr. Scranton, don't you?" Who was an honorable man, a wealthy, Republican landed guy - wealth. And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "The difference between Packy Cummings is Packy Cummings will say - and I think his name was Cummings; I only say Packy because I couldn't verify the last name - he said, "Packy will look at you and say, 'Ambrose - '" that was my grandpop's name - "I'm going to cut your heart out." Or "Ambrose, I'm going to help you."
Whatever Packy says, Joe, he'll do. Now, on the other hand, very wealthy Republicans, they'll tell you they'll help you and they'll treat you well in their homes and their country clubs. But on the street, they think politics is actually beneath them, so anything goes. They think politics is for Jews and Catholics and Blacks and Poles and Irish - it's beneath them, so anything goes.
And the lesson of my grandfather was that the foundation principle of politics is keeping your word. And that's kind of how I was raised. My dad used to say, "It takes a small man to hit a small child or a woman." My dad never raised his hand to any of us, ever. My dad railed against the kind of injustice that sat out there.
And the nuns that taught me. Taught me that it's not only important that you acknowledge injustice, but you've got to do something about it. That's why I got involved in the civil rights movement as a young kid in Delaware. So it all wrapped up - my faith, my family, my environment - they all kind of taught, not by design, but all taught the same lesson. You gotta get up and you gotta stand up. And I tell some funny stories in there, but that's what it's all about - standing up.
Tavis: There are indeed some funny stories in here. There are a lot of funny stories but there are a lot of serious stories. You mentioned earlier in our conversation you have been around for quite a while, and you have been - serving honorably in the U.S. Senate. You've been around for so long, respectfully, that people forget when you got there.
You got there at 29. You got elected to the United States Senate at the age of 29, and shortly after you are elected one of the most tragic incidents in your life takes place. Tell me about it and what you learned from it.
Biden: Well, it's the only part of the book I didn't want to write. The publisher saw it and said, "Look, you can't write about this without mentioning it," and it's hard to talk about in the sense that I'm not comfortable with it. My wife and three children were Christmas shopping six weeks after I got elected, and a tractor-trailer broadsided them and killed my wife and killed my daughter.
And for the longest time, Smiley, meaning months, I thought - Tavis - I thought that this could only happen to me. It was, like, I was the only guy this ever happened to. And then as time went on, I realized there's a lot of other people with a lot less help, a lot less support than I had with my family who've gone through similar tragedies, and they got back up. And I looked at my sons like a lot of people who listen to this looked at their children, and realized I've got a promise.
And my promise is, I take care of these kids. I can't wallow in my self-pity here. And it took me a while. I wish I'd been a better man and done it quicker, but it was about getting back up. But the thing it taught me was I was really lucky. I was a single father for a while, but I had a lot of help.
And I just think of those people out there making minimum wage, gone through things as tough as I've gone through, and have no help. And their kids are held to the same standards. So it gave me a real appreciation for how many really courageous people there are out there.
Tavis: for a minute, you actually were thinking about not taking that Senate seat. You had been elected, but had not been sworn in. Your wife and your daughter are killed in this horrible accident; you've got two boys you've got to raise by yourself. Take me back to what you were thinking about actually not taking - I'm talking to you as a long-term U.S. senator - you might not have taken that seat had you gone in the other direction.
Biden: Well, I decided not to take the seat, and but for the fact there is a wonderful man you know of - the former majority leader from Montana. His name was Mike Mansfield. Were it not for the fact that he gave me the Dutch uncle treatment and said, "Look, you owe it to your wife, you owe it to - just give me six months."
He said, "Give me six months and then - " because my brother had been talking to our governor about who would replace me instead of me being sworn in. And so I said, "Okay, six months." He actually convinced me - how naive I was - that he needed me, and he had, like, 58 democrats organized. And so I said, "I'll stay for six months." And what he did, he engaged me immediately, he engaged me in things I had to be involved in.
And in a sense, he probably saved my life, or at least my sanity. And so here I was. But I wouldn't go down and get sworn in when everyone else was to get sworn in, because my sons were hospitalized. So he was a wise old guy; he sent the secretary, he set it up in the hospital room where I was, and swore me in (laughter) in case I changed my mind.
But I had a lot of help, again. I learned a lot about the Senate. There's a lot of kind, generous people. Guys like Claiborne Pell, Ted Kennedy. Republicans like the guy named Bill Saxbe. People like Ted Stevens, their families, they embraced me, they helped me - Fritz Hollings.
And you know, I was really lucky, and it taught me that the Senate is about personal relationships. And it really has served me well. But again, I was lucky. I went through a lousy thing, no question, but I was lucky in the kind of people I had around me to embrace me at a time when I didn't want any part of any of this.
I'd actually gone to Vermont with my brother Jim and we looked at a home, because I thought, I gotta get out of Delaware. I gotta move; I gotta get away. I don't want to think about any of this. But I said, "Okay, we're going to put it off for six months." And my dad had another piece of advice, Tavis. He said, “When you're really, really in trouble, the thing to do is just sit down and don't make any decision.” Don't make any decision till your head was cleared. And with the help of my father and mother and my sister and my brother and my colleagues in the Senate, they kind of navigated me through this till I sort of got back on my feet.
Tavis: John Sununu and Barack Obama are among the youngest members of the United States Senate right now, but imagine - they're in their early forties. Joe Biden was elected, again, at the age of 29, and he is still serving in the United States Senate now, of course trying to become the standard bearer for his party.
Biden: Hey, Tavis, I want you to know there's only four guys served longer than me; there's still 44 older than me. That's the important part to know. (Laughter) I keep kidding myself. I'm the only guy that could work at a place for 34 years and still about half the guys are older than me.
Tavis: Joe Biden's got jokes, and he's got a new book with a lot of jokes in it. With a lot of good stuff in it. The new book is called "Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics," by the senior senator from the state of Delaware, Joe Biden. Senator, always an honor to have you on the program.
Biden: It's great to be with you, man.
Tavis: Take care of yourself.
Biden: Great to be with you. Thanks for having me.
Tavis: My pleasure.
Back to August 8, 2007