JACKSON — One sun-drenched Saturday in August 1985, a heavyweight collection of United States senators came to the tiny town of DeKalb for a ceremony honoring Mississippi Sen. John C. Stennis on his 84th birthday.
Among them were such noted conservatives as Barry Goldwater and Strom Thurmond. But the senator who really turned on the 2000 Mississippians gathered outside the Kemper County courthouse was the youngest of the visiting senatorial brass, one who happened also to be the only self-proclaimed liberal of the lot.
His name: Democratic Sen. Joe Biden Jr. of Delaware, then 42 years old. His thinning then-reddish brown hair glistened in the Mississippi August sun as his enthusiasm showed he was the best speaker that day. And that he regarded Mississippi’s Stennis as his mentor.
That was before Biden got the plugs — hair implants — that at first became quite noticeable on his otherwise balding head in frequent TV appearances. Far better than most, the plugs worked well, giving Biden almost a full head of hair. Graying over the years, the implants now give the Delaware senator a fairly thick gray mane.
At that time in 1985, as I then noted in print, Biden was being considered in national Democratic circles as one of the party’s bright prospects to win the White House at the end of the Ronald Reagan reign. Though over the next 19 years he made two bids for the Democratic presidential nomination, he never succeeded in getting on the party ticket. Until now.
As the world now knows, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware is the Democrats’ 2008 nominee for vice president. It should be pointed out that while it took two decades for Biden to become a national Democratic flag-bearer, a serious health hazard came along that not only threatened to end his political career but also his life. In 1988, he suffered two brain aneurysms and came near death, but amazingly managed to snap back after a few weeks out of action and regain his oratorical ability.
While Goldwater and a half-dozen other senators served up their own brand of good humor about Stennis, what really hit the spot with the Kemper County crowd that Saturday back in 1985 was Joe Biden’s Irish charisma and enthusiasm. Even Biden’s clear reference to himself as a liberal didn’t diminish his starring role that day.
A comparison I had made between Biden’s and Stennis’ voting records showed, however, that while the Delaware senator voted more liberal than Stennis on social issues, their records were not very far apart on broad economic issues.
While in later years he would build his senatorial career as the leading Democratic authority on foreign affairs, Biden first gained national notice in 1987 as Senate Judiciary chairman leading the charge that blocked President Reagan’s controversial nomination of Robert Bork, the intellectual right-wing ideologue, to the Supreme Court. Significantly, Stennis voted with Biden against the Bork nomination.
Biden had won his Senate seat in 1972 at the age of 29 and had to wait until he was 30 to constitutionally assume his post. Because Biden’s Roman Catholicism and beaming smile and quick wit were reminders of John F. Kennedy, some political pundits in the 1980s believed he was the Democrats’ brightest prospect since Kennedy.
As American voters now know, Biden in his 36 years in the U.S. Senate has never had a residence in Washington, commuting daily by Amtrak to his home in Delaware. Once he was chided in the press for claiming to have come from a working class background. The facts were borderline: his father was a car salesman, and he grew up in a middle-class home.
When George Bush began beating the drums for the Iraq War, Biden as ranking Democrat on Foreign Relations worked closely with Republican Sen. Richard Luger against the U.S. becoming involved in unilateral action, pushing to take issues with Saddam Hussein and Iraq to the United Nations. With Luger he brought forth a resolution to authorize the president to take action to remove any weapons of mass destruction, but not Hussein himself. As history shows, Bush pushed aside the Luger-Biden proposal and opted for an open-ended resolution (partly drawn by Mississippian Trent Lott) which he used to invade Iraq and also topple Hussein.
As Democratic running mates, Biden and Barack Obama compliment each other, except on one notable issue: Biden (whose state is the base of many credit card companies) voted for the controversial 2005 bankruptcy bill. Obama voted against it.
