Biden’s First Run for President Was a Calamity. Some Missteps Still Resonate.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/us/politics/biden-1988-presidential-campaign.amp.html
Excerpt:
In 1988, Joe Biden was prone to embellishment. Hints of that linger today. But unlike then, his message to voters is clear: He’s a stabilizing statesman in a tumultuous time.
Joe Biden was riffing again — an R.F.K. anecdote, a word about “civil wrongs,” a meandering joke about the baseball commissioner — and aides knew enough to worry a little.
“When I marched in the civil rights movement, I did not march with a 12-point program,” Mr. Biden thundered, testing his presidential message in February 1987 before a New Hampshire audience. “I marched with tens of thousands of others to change attitudes. And we changed attitudes.”
More than once, advisers had gently reminded Mr. Biden of the problem with this formulation: He had not actually marched during the civil rights movement. And more than once, Mr. Biden assured them he understood — and kept telling the story anyway.
By that September, his recklessness as a candidate had caught up with him. He was accused of plagiarizing in campaign speeches. He had inflated his academic record. Reporters began calling out his exaggerated youth activism.
“I’ve done some dumb things,” Mr. Biden conceded at a stop-the-bleeding news conference at the Capitol. “And I’ll do dumb things again.”
He vowed that day to fight on. He quit the race within a week.
Thirty-two years later, as Mr. Biden seeks the presidency for a third time, his disastrous campaign for the 1988 Democratic nomination offers a revealing look at the personal tics and political flaws of the front-runner in the 2020 race — traits that, in many ways, continue to color Mr. Biden’s public life.
Mr. Biden announced his presidential campaign in Wilmington, Del., in June 1987.CreditKeith Meyers/The New York Times
Mr. Biden was, and remains, a “gut politician,” as he has long told associates — swaggering, ad-libbing, liable to get carried away in front of a crowd. Already this year, he has boasted of his purportedly peerless foreign policy knowledge, comparing himself favorably to Henry A. Kissinger, the former secretary of state. He has suggested, implausibly, that he has the most progressive record in the 2020 field. He has muddled through explanations of his treatment of Anita Hill when she accused Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, at times stopping himself midsentence to abandon a line of defense
