Senator Joe Biden for president---in the primaries

Biden: SC Will Pick the Next President
by Shelby Highsmith
Posted November 6, 2007

The following piece was produced by the HuffPost's OffTheBus.

Over five weeks of backpacking around Ireland, one of my lasting impressions of the Irish -- my brethren in moniker only for this Polish-Catholic "Fighting Irish" alumnus -- was that they definitely do not share the same sense of personal space that your average American has, becoming nose-to-nose chums with you as soon as you belly up next to them at the bar. Delaware Senator Joseph R. Biden, "grandson son of Ambrose Finnegan" as he described himself to the IAFF, clearly inherited this trait from his father's side of the family, and it's an indispensable part of his political repertoire. Perhaps it's just a benefit of being in the so-called "second tier," but while I've seen more celebrated candidates (in person and on C-SPAN) move along "rope lines" dispensing handshakes, Biden's events are more familial affairs, where an arm thrown over your shoulder is almost the minimum ante when meeting the man of honor.

After leaping, or rather, spilling out of bed at oh-dark-hundred on a Saturday morning in Atlanta and driving across the foggy finger lakes of South Carolina as the sun came up, I sure wished my hands weren't full of camera equipment so I could have a cup of coffee at the Anderson County Democratic Party breakfast. The ACDP had moved their usual 9:00 a.m. gathering up to 8:00 a.m. to accommodate their special guest, and I don't know what their usual attendance is like, but their reserved dining room at the Golden Corral was standing room only and spilling into the wings by the time Joe Biden arrived. He worked the crowd, leaning over waffles and bacon and dodging trays of hot coffee, as the county party chairman started in on a little preliminary business. This was Biden's fourth of nine events in a twenty-four hour swing through the palmetto state.

While every candidate is betting the farm, so to speak, on the first caucuses in Iowa, Joe Biden sees South Carolina as the other bookend that will determine the electoral story of 2008 and is not shy about saying so. Biden for President was the first campaign to open an office in South Carolina because the argument he makes to the Anderson County Democrats in November is the same one he made to the Lee County Democrats in March. "I've been saying for the last two years: South Carolina is going to determine who the next president of the United States is going to be," he tells the crowd. "And I'm not joking when I say that, it's not hyperbole," he says, because by the time Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada cull the field, "there's only going to be two or three [candidates] in South Carolina."

To take Joe Biden at his word, he is almost never joking or being hyperbolic, all kidding aside, when he tells you what what is literally, literally the case in American politics today. With all of his disclaimers, one almost expects to hear Inigo Montoya step in and chastise him, "You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means." And yet to hear him say it in person, it is easy to see that Joe Biden believes to his core the almost grandiose points he makes: that this is the most important election of our lifetimes, and that the next president will have the opportunity to "literally, literally change the direction of the world."

And why else would Biden want to subject himself to this race, particularly when all it seems anyone cares to blog about him are his abortive 1988 bid and his handful of verbal gaffes? One justification some attribute to what they consider "hopeless" campaigns is the national soapbox available to an otherwise unrecognized politician for self-promotion. But Biden's ubiquitous presence on the Sunday morning talk shows was already a topic of conversation, with Joe "Meet the Press" Biden conceding to the Anderson Democrats, "I'm on them too much."

The other possible motivation, frequently attributed equally to Biden and New Mexico's Governor Bill Richardson, of vying for a VP or Secretary of State nod -- a post arguably no more attractive than the pedestal of a Foreign Relations Committee chairmanship -- was itself the basis for Biden's capstone argument to the ACDP why he should earn their vote. "My colleagues Bill Richardson and Hillary and Barack...say, 'Biden would be the best possible Secretary of State we could have.' And they say that hoping that no one will think of me as President." His breakfast audience laughed, but chuckles subsided to smiles and finally to very serious, stoic faces as he continued with a challenge. "But let me ask you a rhetorical question: in this election, are you ready to vote for anyone for president who's not fully capable of being Secretary of State. And ask yourself the other rhetorical question: would you appoint any one of them Secretary of State?"

He continued with his "brief" opening remarks for about another eighteen minutes, daring to touch on the topic of electability: "I know it's not appropriate in some people's minds to talk about electability. I think it's pretty important not only who can get elected, but how they can get elected, and where they can win." If the Democratic nominee in 2008, he argued, has to rely on the same twenty-blue-states-plus-one strategy as in the last two elections, upon reaching the White House "they will not be able to govern," because they will not have the kind of mandate they need to sway congressional votes from redder states.

Closing his speech, Biden went on to answer a few questions for another twenty minutes and change. When the answer to his final, quick question -- taken under the admonishment from his staff that it was time to think about getting to the next event -- was stretching into its seventh minute, I could only imagine his handlers' heart palpitations as I realized my opportunity for the interview I requested was quickly evaporating. Biden's reputation for being loquacious is well-deserved, but then so was President Bartlett's on NBC's "The West Wing," and I know few Democrats who wouldn't vote for that fictitious world leader right after Al Gore if they had their druthers. This also might be why the six-term senator has a hard time breaking out of the second tier when his main platform is a series of debates that are little more than aggregated sound bites.

As the entourage tried to build momentum toward the door, Biden's campaign press secretary, Mark Paustenbach, asked me if I wanted to horn in on the microscopic press availability in the foyer for the local paper. "Are you kidding? It's almost 9:40," I pointed out, and the candidate was allegedly taking part in a parade in Greenville, 30 miles away, at 10:00.

Looks like I'm going to Greenville. So much for watching another Notre Dame defeat on the telly.

The last place you want to be in a pack of speeding cars is at the very back, but not having expected a second campaign stop in my day, and not having printed out the appropriate Google map, that is exactly where I found myself. Fortunately for me, I made it to Greenville with neither the ounces of gasoline I had left burning past vapors nor a South Carolina highway patrol falling in behind us to spot my lack of a 2008 sticker on my license plate (it's in my glove box, I swear). Fortunately for the candidate, we delivered him to the starting intersection of the inaugural parade for the HBCU Classic precisely as his convertible prepared to roll out. "Just in time" delivery, the key to American competitiveness!

I parked my car illegally in some parking lot I would soon forget the location of, threw all my fake-reporter gear back on and ran as un-awkwardly as I could back to the police barricade the motorcade had explained its way through. A couple of campaign staffers were triumphantly watching their candidate ride into the distance and told me they were about to return to the cars and drive over to the end of the procession where the next press availability ought to be. "No thanks," I said, and hoofed it down the street, camera rolling, under the delusion I could catch a car while carrying a small internet television station on my back.

I caught up with the Bidenmoble at the terminal parking lot as Sen. Biden disembarked and resumed working the crowd. One of his South Carolina hosts, state Representative Fletcher Smith, was in his orbit, talking to observers wondering what was the fuss about this vaguely familiar-looking guy with the cameras around him. Smith had only endorsed Biden's bid for the nomination a few weeks earlier, stepping down as co-chair of Bill Richardson's state committee due to differences in their views on a sensible withdrawal from Iraq. "You watch him in Iowa," he told onlookers of Biden, "you'll be surprised."

A real reporter with more chutzpah would have taken advantage of the emerging down time, as the marching band marched off and the rest of the crowd started to think about going to watch some football, to grab Joe Biden by the arm and put him in front of another camera, background noise be damned. I am not a real reporter, so I stood idly by shooting B-roll footage as Biden inquired about his schedule and mused about finally getting a bite to eat. The entire entourage, which had grown since Anderson county, started moving toward vehicles talking of lunch, and I clung like a remora fish hoping there'd be time for questions between bites of a sandwich. But a few fragments of conversation were tossed back and forth, the momentum sputtered, and the entourage went back into hover mode -- and the candidate, with the state chair behind the wheel, disappeared.

Even "second-tier" candidates need some quiet time.

But unlike the celebrity candidates who need their time in public managed like a troop deployment and crowds controlled like flood waters behind a dam, Biden only sneaks his respite in after he's managed to put an arm around every last person in shouting distance. In four personally observed campaign trips, there's never been a "get me out of here" moment; it's always the candidate that the staff has to tear away from the crowd and not vice-versa. A reporter for The Item in Sumter, SC chided me that not following Biden to the local Huddle House for a late dinner back in March was a major journalistic mistake on my part, as he was still as willing to make his case "after hours" as when the long day had begun. When media-controlled elevator pitches aren't enough to mount an effective insurgent campaign, Biden knows that every minute of face time he can get in the first four states is vital to his bid for the nomination.

The campaign reassembled at the Allen Temple Community Development Center to tour a college fair associated with the HBCU parade events. A dozen or so area colleges and a few employers were tabling in the auditorium, and a local Biden supporter -- the driver of the Bidenmobile in the parade -- sat at an unadorned table handing out stapled packets of Biden's presidential plans to potential young voters and their parents. There was a press conference supposedly promised with the event that Biden was going to take part in, but the only media outlets that heeded the press advisory were the local Fox affiliate, whose lone cameraman milled about collecting his own B-roll footage, and, well, little ol' me.

But Biden didn't turn tail to make the next event on time because of the lack of cameras. He was back in his element, at least as much here as when discussing the wonk-tastic fine points of international security: his wife, Jill, who recently completed her doctorate in education, teaches at Delaware Technical and Community College. He grabbed a group of boys coming out of the auditorium and drew them into a huddle, asking them about their college plans before telling them about the beat-down tackles he had to run from in his early days of football when the boys' answers turned to athletic plans.

Biden himself has made education one of the underpinnings of his agenda for domestic revival. When asked that morning in Anderson about creating more jobs, he dealt with the expected talking points on fair trade before explaining his education proposals to make America more competitive in the world market. "Do you realize the average kid we compete with around the world puts in somewhere between twenty-five and fifteen percent more class time than our kids do?" To correct this, Biden proposes a sixteen year education system over our current twelve year setup: two more years of pre-school at the beginning "if their parents choose to do it," and guaranteeing a two-year associate's degree by assisting those who can't afford it.

"Just imagine what we could do," he said quietly, surprising me at my side while I fidgeted with my camera and he gazed out over the several dozen kids talking to recruiters. "Four hundred thousand of these kids can't go to colleges they get into," because of financial constraints -- a chief obstacle he hopes to eliminate with his plan, and one he had to skirt himself when his father couldn't get the loan required for his college tuition at the University of Delaware. When it came to his own children's college and post-grad education, he said, "I was lucky, I had a house that actually appreciated in value," which he sold five years ago to pay off the average of $82 thousand of loans each between his three graduates.

And Biden's love of talking education with anyone who will listen would be the next harbinger of doom for my interview plans. Paustenbach was already looking nervous about time again when he told me to set up outside for my chat with the senator on their way to the car, as they had affairs to attend to before a football game at which Biden would be tossing the opening coin -- an event that cannot be delayed on account of some presidential hopeful. I deferred to college football and settled for two of my half-dozen intended questions: what are those recent bills sponsored on Burma and the International Violence Against Women Act, and what the hell do we do about Pakistan?

"The single most significant thing that we could do to change the international environment according to most scholars is literally to empower women in countries where they're not empowered at all," he said after dealing with the latest round in the Biden-Giuliani street fight. And then, there was Pakistan -- which, unbeknownst to either of us non-Blackberry-wearing fellows, was at that very moment going down the kind of spiral that Biden had warned, in a debate four days earlier, was more frightening than Iran's furtive nuclear program. I asked him, on the heels of Karen Hughes's second departure from the Bush administration, how we worry about Pakistan as a threat while bringing up our 15% favorability rating among its people.

"You've got to have a Pakistani policy and not a Musharraf policy. This administration has a General Musharraf policy. So what you have to do is -- there's a vast majority, a significant middle of the population of Pakistan, [that] is democratic and middle-class. But what's happening is, absent free elections, you're forcing them underground, radicalizing them, and you're giving great sway to that portion of the population that's already radicalized," he said, and argued that aid to education with an eye toward economic development is more conducive to long term goals in the country.

Absent free elections in Pakistan? Get out. That's crazy talk.

"If we were ever to attack Iran," he continued after tying in our strategy in Afghanistan, "we will radicalize Pakistan beyond anything it is now. You'll see Musharraf fall, you will see the circumstances in Kabul change drastically -- all these things are connected. And my sense is none of the Republicans except John McCain understands it."

I lacked the journalistic instincts to ask him if any of the other Democrats understood it; I just thanked him for his time and wished him speed on the road.

"Thanks for covering me," he said with his satellite-detectable grin and a vigorous handshake as he started to walk to the car that had been creeping up on us, anxious to whisk him to the next appointment. But with a mainstream media discussing almost nothing but "inevitability" while paying little mind to the guy more than one political analyst describes as many Iowa caucusers' "favorite second choice," how could I not?