At age 78, Biden is the oldest U. Prior to his run for the nation's highest office. Biden served 36 years as a U. As a two-term vice president, Biden focused largely on economic and foreign policy issues. In an April video statement announcing his bid for the presidency, Biden characterized the U.
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. At age 10 he moved with his family to the Wilmington, Delaware , area, where his father found work as a car salesman. The first of four siblings, Biden attended a series of Catholic schools, including the elite preparatory high school Archmere Academy.
Though he excelled at sports, Biden received mediocre grades and struggled with a stutter. In he graduated from the University of Delaware with a double major in history and political science, and three years later he earned a law degree from Syracuse University. Meanwhile, in , Biden married Neilia Hunter, with whom he would have three children. Upon finishing law school, Biden returned to the Wilmington area and worked as an attorney for the next four years.
In he won his first election to the New Castle County Council. Then, two years later, at age 29 he pulled off a surprising upset of Republican incumbent J. Caleb Boggs in a race for the U. Tragedy struck, however, before he was sworn in as the fifth-youngest senator in U. That December, his wife and month-old daughter were killed and his two sons were hospitalized when a tractor-trailer plowed into their station wagon.
Rather than move to Washington, D. Biden remarried in to schoolteacher Jill Jacobs, with whom he would have one more daughter. He was returning to work in the Senate having suffered an aneurysm, which was life threatening.
Biden won reelection in and five times after that. Overall, he spent 36 years in the U. Senate, including eight years as chair of the Judiciary Committee and four years as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee.
Despite generally supporting civil rights, Biden opposed the forced busing of students to end de facto segregation. Later on, he presided over the contentious confirmation hearings of U. Bork was ultimately rejected by the Senate while Thomas was narrowly approved.
Known for his foreign policy work, the well-traveled senator purportedly called Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic a war criminal to his face during a visit to Belgrade. Nearly a decade later, Biden voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq.
Nonetheless, he eventually became a critic of the way George W. Having raised a solid amount of campaign cash, Biden launched his first presidential bid in June On the campaign trail, he took to paraphrasing British Labour politician Neil Kinnock. Soon after, reports surfaced that Biden had likewise allegedly lifted passages from Robert F.
Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey , and he was caught on camera exaggerating his academic credentials. With his candidacy on the defensive, Biden withdrew that September to concentrate on the Bork hearings. He then collapsed the following February from a life-threatening brain aneurysm, underwent two surgeries and took a seven-month leave from the Senate. Register here. His long, distinguished political career has been full of success, scandals, gaffes and intense heartbreak.
Mr Biden was formally made president by Congress on January 7 after a violent mob of pro-Trump rioters spent hours on running rampant through the Capitol. He delivered his inaugural address from the Capitol steps that had been overrun by the violent mob two weeks earlier. As a child and teenager, he struggled with a stutter bravely overcoming the affliction through public speaking. His bid came four years after he opted against challenging Hillary Clinton in the Democratic contest so soon after the death of his first son Beau.
Four years older than Mr Trump, Biden will be 78 on inauguration date — the oldest president ever elected for the first time. Biden was elected to the senate aged just In , he secured the passage of arms limitation agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union, reducing the risk of global nuclear disaster.
He first ran for president in keeping his campaign centrist and vague to appeal to the majority of American voters. Biden later would take the blame for his mistakes during the campaign. In , he sponsored the original Violence Against Women Act leading to a major decline in intimate partner violence, from 2.
The Democrat ran for President again in but failed to get his campaign off his ground against a youthful, charismatic Barack Obama who promptly made him his vice president for two terms. As vice president to Obama, he played a pivotal role in lifting the USA out of the Great Recession in and helped pass the Affordable Care Act, guaranteeing health coverage for Americans with pre-existing conditions and 20 million who were previously uninsured.
A spokeswoman for Obama said he had relied on Biden's "knowledge, insight, and judgment throughout both campaigns and the entire presidency". Whilst Trump favoured huge, usually maskless, rallies in the red states, Biden opted for virtual benefits so as not to spread the risk of coronavirus. Biden is popular in some places Democrats, such as working-class swing states Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, his birthplace and the state that tipped him past his necessary votes to win the election.
He also confused his wife with his sister on stage at a rally in California in June. Biden recently faced new questions in regards to greeting strangers at political events, with several women coming forward to say he had made them feel uncomfortable.
He has apologised and said he recognised standards for personal conduct had evolved in the wake of the MeToo movement. Even if he won, Biden would have to wait by law until his 30th birthday to take his seat. Supported by his sister Valerie, who served as campaign manager, his brother Jimmy, who was his chief fundraiser, and his wife, Neilia, Biden barnstormed the state, going door to door in the suburbs and at the shore, and won by less than 3, votes out of a total , cast.
But tragedy soon followed. On December 18, , Neilia set out to do some Christmas shopping with the three kids when a tractor trailer plowed into her station wagon, killing Neilia and Amy. Beau and Hunter were badly injured. Biden considered giving up his Senate seat before he even arrived, but Democratic and Republican colleagues persuaded him to give the new job a try.
He was sworn in as senator in the chapel at Wilmington Medical Center with Beau, Hunter, and other family members. Even in his early years as a senator, Biden sought prominence as a national figure, though he kept his focus on the needs of his constituents in Delaware, a task made easier by his daily commutes home.
He also developed an early reputation for candor, acknowledging in the second year of his term what many senators kept to themselves: that the presidency was the place to be if you wanted to have the biggest national impact. In , Biden met Jill Jacobs, a student at the University of Delaware eight years his junior, and they were married in Their daughter Ashley was born in He was chairman or ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee for 17 years.
He chaired the confirmation hearings of five justices, the most contentious being the hearings over the nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. In , Biden presided over the confirmation hearings of Robert Bork, a US Appeals Court Judge and former US solicitor general, who was a declared opponent of civil rights and whose originalist views presupposed his adversity to Roe v.
Wade ; he also favored maximum powers for the executive branch. During the Thomas hearings in , Biden failed to conduct a full investigation into sexual harassment allegations against the nominee. Ever since the staunchly conservative Thomas won confirmation, liberals have criticized Biden for shutting down the hearings before the harassment debate was fully aired.
When his handling of the hearings became a presidential campaign issue, Biden told ABC News in that "Hill did not get treated well. I take responsibility for that. As Judiciary Committee chairman, Biden was a leading advocate for massive tough-on-crime legislation such as the federal crime bill that stiffened sentences, widened application of the death penalty, added police officers to the streets, and provided funding for new prisons. Crime in America had tripled between and , inflamed by a crack-cocaine epidemic in the s.
Working with police groups, Biden wrote the Senate version of the bill, which he used to proudly call the Biden Crime Bill. When Congress passed the new law with bipartisan support, it was not considered terribly controversial. But in recent years, it has been seen as contributing to the plague of mass incarceration.
Ever since his stumble over the Anita Hill accusations, Biden has worked to improve his record on issues important to women. In , appalled by the lack of attention given marital rape and moved by the killing of 14 women in Montreal who were targeted because the shooter believed they were feminists, Biden introduced the Violence Against Women Act that promised federal penalties for crimes against women.
Stalled by Republicans, the bill went nowhere until when Congress finally passed it. He is prone to boast of his achievements overseas, sometimes exaggerating his role or impact, causing some critics to downplay his foreign policy acumen.
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