1987

JOE BIDEN:

—as today, I announce my candidacy for president of the United States of America.

2007

JOE BIDEN:

Friends, today I filed the necessary papers to become candidate for president of the United States.

2019

JOE BIDEN:

Today I’m announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.

PEGGY NOONAN, The Wall Street Journal:

When people get in the habit of running for president, and in the habit of wanting the presidency, and in the habit, when they reflect on their lives, of thinking they could win and they could be a good president, that’s a hard habit to break. Dreams die hard.

NARRATOR:

In the 2020 election, Joe Biden’s dream of the presidency was fading.

MARK LEIBOVICH, The New York Times Magazine:

He was seen as yesterday’s news. He was a very rickety ship. He was not as eloquent as he was 30 years ago, like most people wouldn’t be. And he also—he was saddled with a very, very long record, some of it going back to the ’70s.

MALE ANNOUNCER:

From NBC News, Decision 2020: The Democratic Candidates Debate.

NARRATOR:

At the first primary debate, that long, complicated record was a liability.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA):

I’m going to now direct this at Vice President Biden. You opposed busing. And there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.

WESLEY LOWERY, Author, They Can’t Kill Us All:

It wasn’t about the specifics of the busing debate. It was a signal.

KAMALA HARRIS:

—so I will tell you that on this subject—

WESLEY LOWERY:

It was saying that this is a white guy who is so old that he was taking a position on busing in the first place.

KAMALA HARRIS:

But Vice President Biden, do you agree today—do you agree today that you were wrong to oppose busing in America then? Do you agree?

JELANI COBB, The New Yorker:

Precisely because he has such a long track record in American politics you can point to him being on the wrong side of questions that are now considered to be completely settled.

NARRATOR:

In the weeks that followed, things didn’t get better.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Meanwhile, in a stunning reversal, Joe Biden’s campaign struggles to match rival presidential candidates in fundraising.

MALE NEWSREADER:

—numbers are down among women. Down among independents. The drop is primarily among younger voters.

NARRATOR:

He struggled to excite voters.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

—President Joe Biden, struggling in the polls here, will instead—

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Joe Biden, is his campaign in trouble? The former vice president—

DAN BALZ, The Washington Post:

He did not look like an effective candidate. He lacked energy often. He wasn’t as crisp as a lot of people had hoped he would be.

NARRATOR:

His campaign was in crisis.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Joe Biden presently trailing in fourth place.

MALE NEWSREADER:

—surprised how bad Joe Biden did. He fled the stage—

EVAN OSNOS, The New Yorker:

One of his senior advisers had to call him and have what she described to me as the conversation you never want to have with a candidate, which is “We may be approaching the point of having to shut this thing down.”

MALE NEWSREADER:

Joe Biden is fighting for his political survival.

NARRATOR:

It was a moment of peril.

MALE NEWSREADER:

—make-or-break time, in particular for Joe Biden.

NARRATOR:

But Joe Biden had been here before.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Joe Biden, fighting to survive after a fourth straight—

DAN BALZ:

And this is a person who had suffered significant setbacks, both personally and politically. And out of that I think he had come to a sense of what his strengths and weaknesses really were.

MATT BAI, The Washington Post:

We’re talking about a half-century in public life, during which he experienced, multiple times, setbacks, any one of which would have, and has, driven out candidates into leaving public life. So the improbability of where he finds himself is unprecedented in American presidential history.

NARRATOR:

His life had prepared him for this moment.

NARRATOR:

Shaped by challenges—

MALE VOICE:

Stuttering is a fear problem.

NARRATOR:

—tragedy—

MALE NEWSREADER:

An automobile accident killed the wife and baby daughter of Biden of Delaware—

NARRATOR:

—crisis—

MALE NEWSREADER:

—plagiarized a law review article—

NARRATOR:

—perseverance.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Tonight his campaign is doing damage control.

MALE NEWSREADER:

It’s the Biden legacy: perseverance through personal agony.

1955

YOUNG MALE WITH A STUTTER 1:

—hope to peach—teach PE.

YOUNG MALE WITH A STUTTER 2:

—two sisters.

YOUNG MALE WITH A STUTTER 3:

Well, my―father is very strict.

MALE VOICE:

Among the many causes of retarded speech are low intelligence, hearing loss, emotional conflicts, poor methods of the teaching of talking by the parents, brain injury and many others. For example, a child may stutter as he comes out of the early stages of retarded speech.

NARRATOR:

Joe Biden’s formative challenge: He stuttered.

JOHN HENDRICKSON, The Atlantic:

He came of age in another time in which people weren’t as open about disorders or disabilities or setbacks, when the common prescription was “buck up, deal with it.”

NARRATOR:

Dealing with it. A rough-and-tumble childhood in Delaware. His father, a car salesman, fallen on hard times. For little Joey, Catholic school, nuns.

JEANNE MARIE LASKAS, GQ:

He had an assignment he had to memorize, and he had to stand up and deliver it in the classroom.

NARRATOR:

The words were in front of him: “Sir Walter Raleigh was a gentleman.”

VALERIE BIDEN OWENS, Biden’s sister:

When Joe read it, it went “Sir Walter Raleigh was a gentle man.” “Say that again?” “Sir Walter Raleigh was a gentle man.” And this went on three times.

JOHN HENDRICKSON:

He said “gentle man” instead of “gentleman.” And the nun said, “Mr. B-B-B-B-B-B-Biden, what’s that word?” And this is a person in a position of authority. This is a person who’s meant to protect you.

JEANNE MARIE LASKAS:

It was so embarrassing and so enraging that Biden walked out of the room. He walked out of the school. He walked all the way home.

NARRATOR:

Joey’s mom, Jean, marched him back to the school to confront his teacher.

VALERIE BIDEN OWENS:

The sister starts telling him how disrespectful Joe is. And my mother, “Stop.” She said, “Just tell me. Did you make fun of my son?” “Well, I—” “Sister, did you make fun of my son?” “Well—” And my mother said, “Well, I’ll answer it for you. You sure in hell did. And if you ever, ever, ever do that again, I’m going to come back and I’m going to knock your bonnet right off your head. Do we understand each other?”

NARRATOR:

Bullied, harassed, ridiculed, he was hell-bent on beating the stutter.

JOHN HENDRICKSON:

Biden would stand in front of his bedroom mirror holding a flashlight to his face and he would recite Yeats and Emerson.

NARRATOR:

He kept pushing—against the stutter, the bullies—and it paid off.

FRED SEARS, Biden’s friend:

People liked to be around him. He really had a presence. You knew him when he walked in. He was a little taller than most and in very good shape. He was a star football player on their team.

NARRATOR:

Joey Biden found another way to fight back: politics.

JEANNE MARIE LASKAS:

In high school he’s president of his senior class. Honestly, that’s when he gets a taste for it. The stutter is still part of him during his senior year in high school, where he has to introduce his family at graduation, and he has to stand up there and not stutter and say this publicly. And he does it.

CROWD [chanting]:

We want Joe! We want Joe!

NARRATOR:

In the crisis of stuttering, a life method: persevere. Just push through.

JOE BIDEN:

—medical research to confer—to conquer devastating diseases like cancer—

—not the end in and of—in themselves.

The UAW took ex—credible cuts in their future.

JOHN HENDRICKSON:

Many people would say Biden’s stutter is among his most visible weaknesses, if not number one. But it’s also a source of his strength. It’s also the main source of his grit and his determination to just be there competing.

1972

TV ADVERTISEMENT:

Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy for me. Kennedy!

NARRATOR:

As he began his political career, Joe Biden also had a role model: Irish, Catholic, good-looking. Joe emulated what he could.

Kennedy was drawn to politics; Biden was drawn to politics.

Jack had a photogenic wife and children; Joe had a photogenic wife and children.

The Kennedys had a family compound at Hyannis Port; the Bidens would have a family compound in Wilmington, Delaware.

EVAN OSNOS, Author, Joe Biden:

Joe Biden was always fascinated by the Kennedy mystique. He really saw himself as a natural heir to that tradition.

1972 campaign ad

JOE BIDEN:

I’m Joe Biden and I’m a candidate for the United States Senate. Politicians have done such a job on the people that the people don’t believe them anymore, and I’d like a shot at changing that.

NARRATOR:

But Wilmington was no Hyannis Port.

VALERIE BIDEN OWENS, Fmr. Biden campaign manager:

We, the Bidens, we had no money. We had no power or influence. We didn’t know anybody who was a big name who could help us.

JOE BIDEN:

Hi, how are you? Joe Biden’s my name.

NARRATOR:

Like the crisis over his stutter, his political start was a struggle.

Behind in the polls, facing a powerful opponent: United States Sen. Cale Boggs, an ally of President Richard Nixon.

TED KAUFMAN, Fmr. Biden campaign adviser:

Joe Biden asked me about getting involved in his campaign. I started off by telling him that there’s no way you can win.

CURTIS WILKIE, The News Journal, 1971-74:

“Audacious” is good term to apply to Biden back then. This is a guy who wasn’t yet old enough to hold the seat.

NARRATOR:

It was a time of crisis in the country.

PROTESTERS [chanting]:

Peace now! Peace now! Peace now!

NARRATOR:

The Vietnam War had divided Americans—

MALE NEWSREADER:

Opposition to the war in Vietnam has set off demonstrations in several major cities.

NARRATOR:

—igniting social unrest.

In Delaware, racial tensions boiled over.

MALE NEWSREADER:

The National Guard was called out in several cities to put down riots. One of these cities was Wilmington, Delaware.

NARRATOR:

Black residents were angry. Joe Biden saw an opportunity to draw on his personal experience with race, back when he was 19 working at an inner-city pool.

RICHARD “MOUSE” SMITH, Biden’s friend:

He was a lifeguard. He was one of two white guys. He was a tall, slim, young-looking, good-looking, Elvis Presley-looking kind of guy.

JAMES BAKER, Fmr. mayor, Wilmington:

That’s how he got to know some of the guys who were in the gangs. He just seemed to have a natural instinct for getting to know people, getting to understand them, but not being afraid to be around them.

RICHARD “MOUSE” SMITH:

We became friends. We became friends. I was a very troubled child, OK? Leader of a gang, no food at home, electric cut off, no soap, sometimes no soap and water to take a bath, no hot water.

NARRATOR:

Joe and Ricky—he likes to be called “Mouse”—forged a lifetime friendship. Mouse introduced Joe all around the neighborhood. Over the years Biden kept in touch, building relationships in the Black community that would pay off.

PEGGY NOONAN:

Some people are in politics because they’re in love with policy, but they’re not necessarily in love with humans. He loves the game of it. He loves the dance of it. He loves meeting people. He loves hugging strangers.

NARRATOR:

It became his go-to strategy.

MALE NEWSREADER:

President Nixon’s landslide didn’t help the Republicans at all.

NARRATOR:

And in 1972, that method worked.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Some of those who did lose had been considered the most certain to win.

MALE NEWSREADER:

The Republicans lost ground in the Senate—

NARRATOR:

The Black community helped make Joe Biden a winner—

MALE NEWSREADER:

In Delaware—

NARRATOR:

—by less than 3,000 votes.

MALE NEWSREADER:

—whipped by 29-year-old Joseph Biden.

FRED SEARS:

It was very close. People were still surprised at how this even happened.

JOE BIDEN:

All of you have done something that the political pundits said there was no way in the world it could be done!

JILL JACOBS:

That night, all the college kids were so excited. A lot of us went to the Hotel DuPont Ballroom, and it was packed—packed!—and there was so much excitement in the air. I saw this woman coming through the crowd and I realized that it was Neilia, Joe’s wife. And so I walked up to her and I shook her hand and I said, “Congratulations on your win.” And she said, “Thank you very much.” And that was our exchange.

One Month Later

NARRATOR:

Biden and his sister, Val, were in Washington setting up the office, hiring a staff, when the crisis hit.

JEANNE MARIE LASKAS:

The phone rings, and Val gets it. And Biden is sort of paying attention, and then he really starts paying attention when he sees her face.

VALERIE BIDEN OWENS:

I got a call from Jimmy Biden, and he said, “Come home, now. There’s been an accident. And Neilia was in the car, the station wagon, with the three children, Beau, Hunt and Naomi.”

TED KAUFMAN:

And Neilia was literally bringing home the Christmas tree with the kids in the car, the three kids in the car.

NARRATOR:

Campaign flyers from the car helped identify the bodies.

VALERIE BIDEN OWENS:

She was hit broadside by a tractor-trailer. And she and Naomi, who sat behind her in the car seat, they died instantly. And Beau and Hunter were seriously injured.

JEANNE MARIE LASKAS:

And he—he knew. He knew. He knew from the look on her face.

VALERIE BIDEN OWENS:

My brother looked at me and said, “She’s dead, isn’t she?” And I said, “I don’t know, Joey.” I did know. Jimmy told me.

NARRATOR:

He got to the boys. They were all that was left. Broken hips, legs, arms. Beau was all cut up, and Hunter’s skull was fractured.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Since the accident Biden himself has been living at a hospital in Wilmington, Delaware, taking care of his sons.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Today, the senator took his swearing-in ceremony.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Joseph Biden, Democrat of Delaware—

NARRATOR:

Somehow, Biden pulled it together. They held a swearing-in ceremony at the hospital.

JOE BIDEN:

It means a lot to me. I appreciate it. And I hope that I can be a good senator for you all. I make this one promise: that if in six months or so there’s a conflict between my being a good father and being a good senator, which I hope will not occur—I thought would, but I hope it won’t—I promise you that I will contact Gov.-elect Tribbitt, as I had earlier, and tell him that we can always get another senator, but they can’t get another father.

NARRATOR:

The road ahead for Joe Biden would be tough, like the fight against stuttering and the uphill political battle. Once again, in crisis, he would persevere.

JEANNE MARIE LASKAS:

Valerie’s going to help raise the children. He’s going to have a job in Washington and a home in Wilmington and he’s going to ride that train back and forth. He’s going to be home for dinner every night with his kids and his sister. And that’s going to be the family unit. It’s not the one he chose, but that’s going to be the one.

REP. JIM CLYBURN (D-SC), House Majority Whip:

You don’t lose a wife and child at the point in life that he did and not grow from it. You learn from those kinds of experiences. What you do, though, is like Muhammad Ali said one time: “I’ve never been knocked down. I’ve always been getting up.” So Joe has just never been knocked down; he’s always been getting up.

1975

SENATE COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN:

Senator Biden.

JOE BIDEN:

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I truly appreciate the opportunity to sit in on this hearing—

NARRATOR:

From his earliest days in the Senate, Joe Biden was determined to make a name for himself.

JOE BIDEN:

You can’t convince me that the guy you’re kicking back to isn’t saying to you or one of your agents at some point, “Hey look, I’m getting $100,000 from you, but Harry over there, he’s getting $175,000 from whomever else.” You mean you guys didn’t know that was going on?

MARK LEIBOVICH:

He was seen as a bit of a show horse at first. He was not someone who was waiting his turn. In fact, he was fighting as hard for attention and notoriety and the ability to stay as a U.S. Senator as anyone was.

DAN BALZ:

His ambitions were never even thinly disguised. He talked about it not long after he came to the Senate and made clear that being in the Senate itself was not the only thing he might want to do in life.

NARRATOR:

What he wanted to do was to become president.

JOE BIDEN:

Thank you very much!

NARRATOR:

And by 1987, he thought he was ready.

It was a family affair. The boys were older, he had remarried, had a new daughter.

JILL BIDEN, Biden’s wife:

He said, “Let’s just test the waters.” And so I said, “All right.” It sort of just snowballed. And we were into it, really, before we even knew it.

NARRATOR:

But as he campaigned, he headed towards another crisis, stemming from a persistent question: What did he stand for?

PEGGY NOONAN:

I think that’s always been one of his challenges as he tries to go for president. He casts about for what he wants to say. He casts about for the issues he wants to put forward and what he wants to say he believes in. And it feels cast about.

NARRATOR:

Then, one day, a video of a British politician and a story that would give him something to say.

NEIL KINNOCK:

Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?

NARRATOR:

Obsessed with the tape, Biden studied it. He later wrote, “The ad was riveting; I couldn’t take my eyes off Neil Kinnock.”

NEIL KINNOCK:

Is it because they were weak? Those people who could work eight hours underground and then come up and play football. Weak?

DAN BALZ:

Biden could put himself into the Neil Kinnock story. Family in Scranton, Pennsylvania, family in the mines. And so, in a sense, he absorbed the Kinnock story in making it his own.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

The campaign begins in earnest with the first votes for the next president in Iowa.

MALE NEWSREADER:

The candidates spent much of yesterday fanned out over Iowa—

NARRATOR:

In Iowa, during the primary, he took Kinnock’s words, made them his own.

MALE ANNOUNCER:

And now, Mr. Biden.

JOE BIDEN:

Thank you very much. I started thinking as I was coming over here, “Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?”

TED KAUFMAN, Fmr. Biden chief of staff:

He got up there and he gave his speech, and it got to the end, last three minutes, and he gave Kinnock, but he did not attribute it to Kinnock.

JOE BIDEN:

Is it because they didn’t work hard? My ancestors who worked in the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours?

PEGGY NOONAN:

Joe Biden borrowed it and applied it to his own life and made a moving sort of aria, a moving sort of part of a speech about his own life, which in fact had been taken from Neil Kinnock.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Biden seemed to be claiming Kinnock’s vision, and life, as his own.

NARRATOR:

It became front-page news.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Biden has been caught with a sudden embarrassing comparison of his recent campaign speeches. The first example came from Great Britain.

ABC News

NEIL KINNOCK:

Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?

JOE BIDEN:

And I started thinking as I was coming over here, “Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?”

NARRATOR:

His campaign said it was a mistake, that he had cited Kinnock other times.

MALE NEWSREADER:

For a second time in two weeks—

NARRATOR:

But then, the avalanche.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

He looks like a Joe Biden wind-up doll with somebody else’s words coming out.

NARRATOR:

Allegations of failing to cite a source in a law school paper.

MALE NEWSREADER:

—plagiarized a law review article—

NARRATOR:

Taking lines from his political idols, the Kennedys.

MALE NEWSREADER:

—one from John Kennedy’s inaugural, others from Robert Kennedy. Their words, from the lips of Joe Biden.

MARK LEIBOVICH:

Joe Biden comes off as someone who has a lot of self-confidence, but obviously there’s an imposter syndrome dynamic at work here, because if you feel like you have to make up stuff about yourself and invent stories that are not your own and then do it in such a self-destructive way in which you can be caught, that speaks to a level of character, and certainly insecurity, that is common among a lot of politicians.

JOE BIDEN:

Hello, everybody. Delightful to see you all here. You know my wife, Jill.

JILL BIDEN:

Pulling out of the 1987 presidential race was really devastating to Joe and to me and to our family.

JOE BIDEN:

Thanks, folks, my wife and I thank you very much. And Tommy, thanks—

NARRATOR:

Biden lost this fight.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden dropped out of the hunt today—

MALE NEWSREADER:

Joe Biden blames mostly himself for blowing it—

NARRATOR:

But he believed he’d have another chance. He returned to the Senate to rebuild.

DAN BALZ:

It wasn’t as though, having lost in 1988, he faded away or disappeared. He has positions in the Senate that give him power and clout and, in a sense, a national platform from which to continue to project himself as a leader of the Democratic Party.

1991

MALE NEWSREADER:

Committee Chairman Joseph Biden opened confirmation hearings for the nation’s 106th nominee—

NARRATOR:

He concentrated on his job as the chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee.

MALE NEWSREADER:

President Bush says the American people are supporting his choice for the Supreme Court.

NARRATOR:

It was there he would face his biggest challenge yet: the controversy over the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.

MALE NEWS ANCHOR 1:

Good evening. We begin tonight with the potential for political explosion on Capitol Hill.

FEMALE NEWS ANCHOR:

Clarence Thomas ran into trouble today—

MALE NEWS ANCHOR 2:

Questions are growing over charges of sexual harassment against Thomas—

NARRATOR:

This affidavit charged that Thomas sexually harassed a former employee, Anita Hill.

JANE MAYER, Co-author, Strange Justice:

[laughs] It seems to have been a nightmare for Joe Biden. As a man he felt uncomfortable about it. As a white man, he felt uncomfortable taking Clarence Thomas, a Black man, on about it. And the whole subject matter just made him incredibly uncomfortable.

MALE NEWSREADER:

But committee Chairman Biden conceded tonight that new information about the allegations has come in—

MALE NEWSREADER:

Drama and history on Capitol Hill.

NARRATOR:

With the crisis growing, Anita Hill was called to testify.

JOE BIDEN:

The hearing will come to order.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Anita Hill comes to Washington to tell the Senate her side of the Thomas story.

JOE BIDEN:

Welcome, Professor Hill. Professor, do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

ANITA HILL:

I do.

JOE BIDEN:

Thank you.

NARRATOR:

Biden’s committee was all white men—the “men of the Senate,” as they were called.

JANE MAYER:

There was not a single woman who might have understood her story from a woman’s point of view.

JOE BIDEN:

Can you tell the committee what was the most embarrassing of all the incidences that you have alleged?

ANITA HILL:

I think the one that was the most embarrassing was his discussion of pornography involving these women with large breasts and engaged in a variety of sex with different people or animals. That was the thing that embarrassed me the most and made me feel the most humiliated.

CAROL MOSELEY BRAUN, Illinois politician:

Here in Illinois, women were just mesmerized by the hearings. Outraged at what had happened. They looked up and saw a very non-diverse United States Senate Judiciary Committee. There was not a woman there, not to mention person of color. It was just all these cookie cutters, and folks were really horrified by it.

JOE BIDEN:

Let me now yield to my friend from Pennsylvania, Sen. Specter.

NARRATOR:

Biden’s close friend, Republican Arlen Specter, led the charge against Hill.

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER (R-PA):

I find the references to the alleged sexual harassment not only unbelievable, but preposterous.

NARRATOR:

He cast doubt on her memory.

ARLEN SPECTER:

How reliable is your testimony in October of 1991 on events that occurred eight, 10 years ago?

NARRATOR:

He suggested she was exaggerating.

ARLEN SPECTER:

You took it to mean that Judge Thomas wanted to have sex with you, but in fact he never did ask you to have sex, correct?

ANITA HILL:

No, he did not ask me to have sex.

ARLEN SPECTER:

That was an inference that you drew?

ANITA HILL:

Yes, yes.

JOE BIDEN:

Thank you, Professor Hill. We’ll adjourn—

MARK LEIBOVICH:

There were these searing images of this all-white panel, Joe Biden right in the middle of it, grilling Anita Hill, sometimes in quite hostile fashion. And Joe Biden was seen as a real sort of ringleader to that.

NARRATOR:

Biden gave Clarence Thomas the last word. He strongly denied the allegations.

CLARENCE THOMAS:

This is a circus. It’s a national disgrace. And from my standpoint as a Black American, as far as I’m concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity Blacks by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.

JANE MAYER:

Very powerful. I mean, what it did was it shamed these white senators. And it certainly seemed to shame the Democrats, who had just been accused of lynching a Black man.

NARRATOR:

Biden would end up voting against Thomas, but his handling of the hearing damaged him politically.

MICHAEL KRUSE, Politico:

It made him the face of an out-of-touch body and really wounded his prospects of a future run for president. He had some work to do. He had some reputational rehab to do.

NARRATOR:

Biden turned to his method for survival in crisis: acknowledge the problem and repair the damage.

VALERIE JARRETT, Fmr. Obama senior adviser:

Joe is always able to say, “Yeah, I didn’t handle that quite right. Let me see what I can do better the next time.”

MALE NEWSREADER:

Carol Moseley Braun has entered political history. She’s the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Senate—

MALE NEWSREADER:

Big changes here, the kind that have history written all over them.

NARRATOR:

“Fixing things” began by recruiting the first Black woman elected to the United States Senate.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Braun’s anger over the Clarence Thomas hearings turned her into a candidate.

NARRATOR:

Biden wanted to make sure Moseley Braun joined his committee.

SEN. CAROL MOSELEY BRAUN (D-IL), 1993-99:

I made a joke, which he didn’t think was funny at all. I said, “You just want Anita Hill on the other side of the table.” He did not laugh. He didn’t think it was funny. And he still probably doesn’t. [laughs]

NARRATOR:

He would end up convincing her and Dianne Feinstein to join the committee. Joe Biden was rebuilding with an eye on the ultimate prize: the presidency.

MATT BAI, Author, The Argument:

Half a dozen times in his career he faces moments like this where a normal person looks in the mirror and says, “This is never going to happen for me, either because my time has passed or because I’ve humiliated myself or because I’ve been on the wrong side of an issue.” And he just keeps coming back.

2007

MALE NEWSREADER:

Another day, another entry in the presidential race. Delaware Sen. Joe Biden is the ninth Democrat to jump into the candidate pool.

NARRATOR:

It was 2007. Joe Biden was running for president again.

But that very day—

KATIE COURIC:

It sure isn’t easy ruining for president these days—

NARRATOR:

—it all blew up.

KATIE COURIC:

This was not a good day for Joe Biden, was it?

FEMALE REPORTER:

No, it really wasn’t, Katie—

ANDERSON COOPER:

He just got into the race today, and no sooner than he did, he talks his way into a national controversy.

MALE NEWSREADER:

—spent much of the day discussing these comments he made to a newspaper reporter about Sen. Barack Obama.

JOE BIDEN:

I mean, you got the first sort of mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.

FEMALE REPORTER:

Some people listening to those descriptions of Obama—”articulate,” “clean”—heard racial overtones, or, at the very least, condescension.

JELANI COBB, Author, The Substance of Hope:

I think when people heard the “clean and articulate” line, there was a wave of eye rolling, certainly among African Americans. It was the kind of well-intentioned but benighted commentary that you expect from people who inhabit environments where there aren’t very many Black people, and the United States Senate has historically been a prime example of that.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Tonight his campaign is doing damage control.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Joe Biden’s apologizing for a remark he made about Sen. Barack Obama.

NARRATOR:

In the months that followed—

MALE NEWSREADER:

Joe Biden dropped out of the race last night after finishing poorly.

NARRATOR:

—once again, Joe Biden’s campaign would collapse.

MALE NEWSREADER:

The latest news is that Joe Biden is dropping out of the race.

NARRATOR:

But he wasn’t taking himself out of the game. He’d make it personal, build a relationship with Obama.

VALERIE JARRETT:

Out of competition came mutual respect, and mutual respect led to a real relationship, a friendship, and Joe Biden became somebody that President Obama looked to for advice and counsel.

FEMALE REPORTER:

Senator, have you made up your mind about—

BARACK OBAMA:

You are not going to get anything out of me on the vice presidential thing, nothing!

NARRATOR:

Soon, that relationship would pay off as Obama sought a running mate.

BARACK OBAMA:

I’ve got to say that I’ve made the selection, and that’s all you’re going to get. All right?

CAROL MOSELEY BRAUN:

When Barack ran, he needed the support of someone who knew his way around government, and that was Joe Biden.

NARRATOR:

Obama asked him to be on his ticket as vice president. At the house in Wilmington, the Biden inner circle gathered.

TED KAUFMAN, Biden political adviser:

He was not going to do it. I mean, there’s no doubt he was not going to do it. We had another one of those family meetings and a few key people.

JILL BIDEN:

The kids said to me, “Mom, you have to talk Dad into running.” And I said, “Joe, this is such a great moment in history.”

TED KAUFMAN:

His mom said, “Well, Joey”—she called him Joey—she said, “Well, Joey, you’re telling me that the first African American president in history thinks that you can help him get elected and you’re saying no?” Game, set, match. It was over. [laughs]

MALE NEWSREADER:

Barack Obama is projected to be the next president.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois—

NARRATOR:

He’d turned a political crisis into a relationship and became vice president.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Forty-seven years old, he’ll become the president—

VALERIE BIDEN OWENS, Biden’s sister:

He had already squared away in his mind that he understood that Barack Obama was president, Joe was vice president. And Joe understood the job of vice president and wore it well.

NARRATOR:

In the Obama White House, Biden brought with him something the president didn’t have: relationships in Congress spanning decades.

VALERIE JARRETT:

Those were his recently former colleagues, and he knew that he could call them and they would take his call and that he could go and thrash issues out with them with a degree of comfort that President Obama didn’t have because he hadn’t known them as long as Vice President Biden.

NARRATOR:

Biden became Obama’s trusted partner.

MATT BAI:

The real question isn’t “What thing did you do?” if you’re vice president. The real question is “How much influence did you have?”

And I think Biden understands power and leveraging power. I think he had a genuine relationship with Obama and they spent a lot of time talking. But I think he was a very influential vice president, in that way, and an extremely loyal vice president.

NARRATOR:

In return, Obama bestowed on Biden something special, a kind of political sainthood they called the “Obama halo.”

BAKARI SELLERS, Author, My Vanishing Country:

Joe Biden has the Obama halo; everybody knows that. That is the cleansing of Joe Biden and everything that may have happened. And there is such a great irony that someone who was the architect of the ’94 crime bill, and a white man of this age, when you think about Anita Hill, his crutch, his—the reason for his success is a Black man with a funny name who’s kind of skinny from Hawaii by way of Kansas.

2014

CROWD [chanting]:

Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter!

NARRATOR:

In those years as vice president, Biden would confront yet more crises.

CROWD [chanting]:

Black lives matter! Black lives matter!

NARRATOR:

Among them, the building racial tensions—

ERIC GARNER:

Don’t touch me!

NARRATOR:

—growing outrage over police violence against African Americans.

CROWD [chanting]:

Black lives matter! Black lives matter!

NARRATOR:

Then, news of a revenge shooting against the police.

MALE NEWSREADER:

We begin tonight with breaking news: a deadly police shooting in New York City.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Two New York City police officers are dead following an ambush Saturday afternoon.

NYPD SPOKESMAN:

They were, quite simply, assassinated.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Amateur video captured the frantic scene as paramedics desperately tried to save the lives of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.

NARRATOR:

When it came to matters of race, Obama relied on Biden to walk a fine line he could not.

WESLEY LOWERY:

One of Joe Biden’s chief responsibilities was to be an ambassador to the country, specifically to the white parts of the country, where Barack Obama’s presence might have only further inflamed the situation.

NARRATOR:

Now Biden was dispatched to New York.

MALE NEWSREADER:

—25,000 police officers are all there to say goodbye—

NARRATOR:

It was tense.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

—a sea of blue filled the city streets. Many—

NARRATOR:

He used his method: Keep it personal; talk directly to the family of Officer Rafael Ramos.

JOE BIDEN:

Our hearts ache for you. I know from personal experience that there is little anyone can say or do at this moment to ease the pain, that sense of loss, that sense of loneliness.

WESLEY LOWERY:

Joe Biden has been defined in public life by heartbreak and empathy; that when Joe Biden steps up at the funeral, you know that those tears are real.

JOE BIDEN:

The time will come—the time will come when Rafael’s memory will bring a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eyes. That’s when you know it’s going to be OK. I know it’s hard to believe it will happen, but I promise you—I promise you it will happen.

EVAN OSNOS:

It’s an odd role in public life, to be known as a person associated with grief. And Joe Biden never wanted to be that person, actually. It was not how he imagined his own political future. But because of his life, he ended up being this public political symbol of suffering and of resilience. And eventually he embraced it. But he actually didn’t want to be that.

NARRATOR:

That day there was unfinished business: Biden wanted to see Officer Wenjian Liu’s family.

JILL BIDEN:

We came out of the church and Joe said, “I want to offer my condolences to him as well, to them, to that family.”

DON GRAVES:

He wanted to go and meet them and talk with them. So the police worked it out so that we could visit. And they had a translator there.

JILL BIDEN:

I can remember walking up the stairs with an interpreter. And the family was all crammed into this tiny kitchen. And we sat and we talked to them. And we must have been in there—I don’t know, a good hour.

Promise Me, Dad By Joe Biden

MALE VOICE [reading]:

“I started to notice that Wenjian Liu’s father had rarely left my side. Occasionally he would lean into me so that his shoulder touched my arm. ‘Thank you,’ he kept saying. ‘Thank you. Thank you.’”

JILL BIDEN:

We went out on the sidewalk. And the father, who didn’t even speak English, just held onto Joe and—I mean, he was so grateful that Joe had come to offer condolences to the family.

MALE VOICE [reading]:

“We stood there for a long while, embracing on the little sidewalk in front of the house where he had lived with his only son, just two fathers. I understood all that he wanted me to know.”

NARRATOR:

After decades in politics, Biden seemed to have finally found his place.

But soon after the crisis in New York, yet again, a personal crisis.

Biden was burying his own son, Beau.

JEANNE MARIE LASKAS:

He was the apple of Biden’s eye. He was not just someone who he thought was brilliant and successful and so proud of him. It went beyond pride. It was almost like “He’s the perfect version of me.”

NARRATOR:

Beau had served in Iraq. He was attorney general of Delaware. They talked about the presidency someday.

MARGARET AITKEN, Fmr. Biden press secretary:

Joe often describes him as Joe 2.0. And he looked like his dad. He had a lot of the same skill sets as his father. He was very charismatic. He was charming. He was funny.

NARRATOR:

But then—brain cancer.

Death at 46.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Beau Biden, former Delaware attorney general and eldest son of Vice President Joe Biden, died Saturday—

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

—President Biden’s office was the first to announce his son’s death—

MALE NEWSREADER:

The vice president was with his son Beau when he passed away tonight at Walter Reed Medical Center—

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Very sad news, Beau Biden lost his battle with brain cancer.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Family and friends gathered at St. Anthony’s Church in Wilmington yesterday to pay their respects. Some waited in line for to up six hours.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Lines, lines five blocks long outside the church.

NARRATOR:

At one point, after several hours, a surprise.

JILL BIDEN:

There was Mr. Liu and his wife, and they came to give us comfort. It was just two men, really, who had gone through something horrible, just offering comfort to one another.

NARRATOR:

Before Beau’s death, Biden had been considering another run for president. Now the question was not just “would he?” but “could he?”

JEANNE MARIE LASKAS:

I happened to be in Obama’s White House and he walked in. And I, honestly—it was almost like I didn’t recognize him. This was shortly after Beau died. He just looked like he had aged years and years in such a short amount of time.

NARRATOR:

Through crisis and tragedy, Joe Biden had his eyes on the presidency. But now, in grief, he would decide to stand down.

2017

CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS:

Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear—

DONALD TRUMP:

I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear—

NARRATOR:

For the first time in decades, Joe Biden was a private citizen, watching Donald Trump’s polarizing presidency.

JOHN ROBERTS:

So help me God.

DONALD TRUMP:

So help me God.

JOHN ROBERTS:

Congratulations, Mr. President.

PROTESTERS [chanting]:

White lives matter! White lives matter! White lives matter! White lives matter! White lives matter! White lives matter!

ANTONY BLINKEN, Biden campaign adviser:

And then came Charlottesville. That was really the tipping point. When he heard President Trump say there are very fine—some very fine people on both sides, that was it. That was the tipping point.

NARRATOR:

Biden watched, increasingly alarmed. Violent clashes between white supremacists and counterprotesters.

WESLEY LOWERY:

It’s hard to believe, based on his own statements, that Joe Biden doesn’t see some level of personal responsibly for the rise of Donald Trump. Joe Biden was the vice president, and he chose not to run for president. You have to imagine that’s weighed pretty heavily on Joe Biden.

NARRATOR:

He decided to do something about it. At 76 years old, he would run one more time.

JOE BIDEN:

Today I’m announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.

MARK LEIBOVICH:

Through the Democratic primaries, he was not at the top of his game. He kind of staggered along. He didn’t do terribly well when the voting started.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Joe Biden appearing to shrug off an apparent fourth-place finish in Iowa.

NARRATOR:

Fourth in Iowa.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Biden may not have enough cash even to make it through Super Tuesday.

NARRATOR:

Fifth in New Hampshire.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

After three straight losses, Joe Biden is now banking on—

NARRATOR:

But he stuck with his playbook—

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

—has certainly damaged his fundraising ability—

NARRATOR:

Stay in the center, make personal connections, reach out to Black voters.

MATT BAI, The Washington Post:

As he ages, he’s a better candidate every time. He does not waver. He does not appear to be a guy who goes with the wind, even when he appears to be losing and out of step with his own party.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Joe Biden desperately needs South Carolina if he has any chance—

NARRATOR:

His last hope—

MALE NEWSREADER:

—make-or-break time, in particular for Joe Biden.

NARRATOR:

South Carolina.

MALE NEWSREADER:

It all rests on South Carolina.

JIM CLYBURN:

Joe Biden has spent a lot of time in South Carolina. He can relate to South Carolinians. South Carolina was very, very important to Joe Biden.

MALE NEWSREADER:

NBC News is projecting former Vice President Joe Biden is the winner.

NARRATOR:

And the state’s Black voters gave him a victory.

MALE NEWSREADER:

—was reinvigorated largely by Black voters in this state.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Joe Biden wins big.

NARRATOR:

Three days later—

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

In a political earthquake, these are the results nobody saw coming—

NARRATOR:

—he rode the momentum and dominated Super Tuesday.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

—pulled off one of the biggest political upsets in modern political history.

NARRATOR:

Soon, he’d win the nomination.

EVAN OSNOS:

In its own way, it’s the culmination of all of his training and ambition and his mistakes and his regrets and his attempts to be better. And it came together, at last.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Biden has made his pick.

NARRATOR:

And when the time came—

MALE NEWSREADER:

—historic decision from former Vice President Joe Biden.

NARRATOR:

—he turned to the opponent who’d gone after him on the campaign trail, Kamala Harris—

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

—Kamala Harris as his running mate—

NARRATOR:

—and picked her as his running mate.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

—ties to the African American community will help propel him to the White House.

JELANI COBB:

It was an opportunity for him to distinguish himself from Donald Trump, that I actually want to bring the person who has criticized me most harshly into the fold because I value dissenting opinions. And that was part of the message that was being sent with Kamala Harris.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

The coronavirus crisis in this country is taking a dangerous turn—

MALE NEWSREADER:

The true cost of COVID, measured not by numbers, but families.

NARRATOR:

He ran for president in the midst of a profound national crisis.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

COVID-19 is now the third-leading cause of death in the U.S.

MALE NEWSREADER:

—unemployment now soaring to 14.7%.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Millions of Americans on the brink of financial ruin.

MATT BAI:

The moment plays to his strengths in ways that the other moments he ran probably did not.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

It has been double the trauma: first the global pandemic, and now the traumatic death of George Floyd.

MALE NEWSREADER:

—a new wave of grief in the form of police brutality.

MATT BAI:

We’re living in a country that’s experienced, in 2020, a ton of loss.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Disappointment, emptiness, hopelessness and so much fear.

MATT BAI:

And here you have a man whose life has been defined, in a lot of ways, by loss.

NARRATOR:

Joe Biden told voters he understood and promised he would be there for them.

JOE BIDEN:

You folks at home, how many of you got up this morning and had an empty chair at the kitchen table because someone died of COVID? How many of you were in a situation where you lost your mom or dad and you couldn’t even speak to them? You had a nurse holding a phone up so you could, in fact, say goodbye? How many people?

DONALD TRUMP:

You would have lost far more people. Far more people. You would have been much later—

JOE BIDEN:

And by the way—

EVAN OSNOS:

It’s sort of a political story you could not have imagined. This man who’s wanted to be president for half a century and failed to do it over and over, and now finds himself at this moment of really abject national crisis, and that’s the moment when the country sees him for the first time, really.

MALE NEWSREADER:

We’ve reached a historic moment in this election. Joseph R. Biden Jr. is elected the 46th president of the United States.

NARRATOR:

Finally, after five decades, victory.

MALE NEWSREADER:

—and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will receive the most votes of any presidential ticket ever.

JOE BIDEN:

The people of this nation have spoken. They’ve delivered us a clear victory, a convincing victory, a victory for we, the people.

NARRATOR:

Now Joe Biden faces his biggest challenge yet.

DAN BALZ:

I don’t think any president, certainly in my lifetime, has faced the problems that Joe Biden will face as the new president: the pandemic; a weakened economy; the racial issues that are on the table. To do it when the country is as divided as it is will test every bit of what Joe Biden has learned over nearly 50 years in public office.