Joe Biden

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was born on November 20, 1942, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the eldest of four children of Joseph Biden Sr. and Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden ^[1]. His father struggled to find steady work in Scranton during the early 1950s, and the family moved to Claymont, Delaware, when Joe was ten. His father eventually found success as a used car salesman in Wilmington, and the Bidens settled into a middle class life that the future president would invoke throughout his career ^[2].

As a boy Biden battled a pronounced stutter, which classmates mocked. He worked to overcome it by reciting poetry in front of a mirror, a discipline he later described as formative ^[1]. He attended Archmere Academy, a Catholic preparatory school in Claymont, where he played football and was elected class president. He went on to the University of Delaware, graduating in 1965 with a double major in history and political science, and then earned his law degree from Syracuse University College of Law in 1968 ^[2].

While at the University of Delaware he met Neilia Hunter, a Syracuse University student, during a spring break trip to the Bahamas. They married in 1966 and had three children: Joseph III (known as Beau), Robert Hunter, and Naomi ^[3].

After law school Biden returned to Delaware, worked briefly as a public defender and in private practice, and won a seat on the New Castle County Council in 1970 ^[2]. Two years later, at 29, he mounted a long shot challenge to Republican Senator J. Caleb Boggs, a popular two term incumbent. Running a family driven campaign managed by his sister Valerie, Biden won by roughly 3,000 votes in one of the biggest upsets of the 1972 cycle. He met the constitutional age requirement of 30 by his birthday, a few weeks after the election ^[1].

Tragedy struck before he took office. On December 18, 1972, a truck hit the family station wagon while Neilia was out Christmas shopping with the children. Neilia and 13 month old Naomi were killed; Beau and Hunter were seriously injured ^[3]. Biden considered resigning before being sworn in, but Senate leaders persuaded him to stay. He took the oath of office at his sons' hospital bedside and began a decades long routine of commuting home to Wilmington by Amtrak nearly every night, a habit that earned him the nickname "Amtrak Joe" ^[1].

In 1977 he married Jill Jacobs, an educator he had met on a blind date arranged by his brother. Their daughter Ashley was born in 1981 ^[3]. Over 36 years in the Senate, Biden became a fixture of Delaware politics, winning reelection six times.

Biden built his Senate reputation on two committees. As chairman of the Judiciary Committee from 1987 to 1995, he presided over contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearings, including the rejection of Robert Bork in 1987 and the confirmation of Clarence Thomas in 1991, the latter marked by Anita Hill's testimony, for which Biden's handling drew lasting criticism ^[4]. He was a principal author of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which included the Violence Against Women Act, a provision he often called his proudest legislative achievement ^[2].

On the Foreign Relations Committee, which he chaired twice, Biden shaped debates over the Balkans, NATO expansion, and the Iraq War. He voted in 2002 to authorize the invasion of Iraq, a vote he later said he regretted ^[4]. He sought the presidency himself in 1988, withdrawing after reports that he had used passages from a speech by British Labour leader Neil Kinnock without attribution, and again in 2008, when he exited after the Iowa caucuses ^[1].

His 2008 campaign nonetheless caught the attention of the eventual nominee. Barack Obama selected Biden as his running mate that August, valuing his foreign policy experience and appeal to working class voters ^[2].

Biden served as vice president from 2009 to 2017. Obama assigned him substantial portfolios: overseeing implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the roughly 800 billion dollar stimulus passed in response to the 2008 financial crisis, and managing the drawdown of United States forces in Iraq ^[5]. He acted as the administration's chief negotiator with congressional Republicans during budget standoffs, drawing on decades of Senate relationships, particularly with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ^[4].

In May 2012 Biden publicly endorsed same sex marriage in a television interview, ahead of Obama's own announcement days later, a moment widely credited with accelerating the administration's position ^[5]. His second term was shadowed by personal loss. Beau Biden, a former Delaware attorney general and Iraq War veteran, died of brain cancer in May 2015 at age 46. Grieving, Biden announced that October that he would not run for president in 2016 ^[3].

In January 2017, days before leaving office, Obama surprised Biden by awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction ^[5].

Biden entered the 2020 Democratic primary in April 2019, arguing the election was a battle for the soul of the nation. After early losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, a decisive win in South Carolina revived his campaign, and he consolidated the field on Super Tuesday. He chose Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate, and in November 2020 defeated incumbent Donald Trump with 306 electoral votes and more than 81 million popular votes, the most ever cast for a presidential candidate ^[6]. At 78, he became the oldest person inaugurated president, taking office on January 20, 2021, two weeks after the attack on the United States Capitol.

Among the central Joe Biden achievements in office were the American Rescue Plan of March 2021, a 1.9 trillion dollar pandemic relief package; the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of November 2021; the CHIPS and Science Act promoting domestic semiconductor manufacturing; and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which contained the largest climate investment in American history ^[6]. He also signed the first major federal gun safety legislation in nearly three decades and appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the Supreme Court ^[7].

His term brought serious trials as well. The withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 ended America's longest war but descended into chaos, including a bombing at Kabul airport that killed 13 American service members ^[7]. Inflation reached a four decade high in 2022, weighing on his approval ratings. Abroad, Biden organized Western support for Ukraine after Russia's full scale invasion in February 2022, expanding NATO to include Finland and Sweden ^[6].

Biden initially sought reelection in 2024, but after a halting debate performance against Trump in June of that year, pressure mounted within his party. On July 21, 2024, he withdrew from the race and endorsed Harris, who lost the November election. He left office on January 20, 2025 ^[7].

Biden has been married to Jill Biden, who holds a doctorate in education and continued teaching at a community college while serving as first lady, since 1977 ^[3]. He is the father of four children: Beau, who died in 2015; Hunter, whose business dealings and 2024 federal convictions (later pardoned by his father) became a persistent political controversy; Naomi, who died in infancy; and Ashley, a social worker ^[3].

A practicing Catholic, Biden was only the second Catholic to hold the presidency, after John F. Kennedy, and attended Mass regularly throughout his time in office ^[1]. He has written two memoirs: Promises to Keep, published in 2007, and Promise Me, Dad, a 2017 account of Beau's illness and death ^[2]. Between the vice presidency and presidency he taught as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement was established in his name.

In May 2025, months after leaving office, Biden announced that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had spread to the bone ^[8].

Anyone asking who was Joe Biden, or rather who he is, confronts one of the longest careers in modern American politics: county councilman at 28, senator at 30, vice president at 66, president at 78. Among the most cited Joe Biden facts is that half century arc, along with his survival of two brain aneurysm surgeries in 1988 and repeated personal bereavements that shaped his public identity as a figure of empathy ^[1].

Assessments of his presidency remain contested and early. Supporters point to a record of legislation on infrastructure, manufacturing, and climate that rivals any single term in decades, a strong labor market recovery from the pandemic, and the rebuilding of alliances strained under his predecessor ^[6]. Critics cite the inflation of 2021 and 2022, the Afghanistan withdrawal, a border crisis, and his decision to seek a second term despite public concern about his age, a choice many Democrats argued contributed to their 2024 defeat ^[7].

What is not in dispute is his imprint on the institutions he served. Few Americans have spent as long at the center of national decision making, from the Cold War through the pandemic era, and his career offers a study in persistence through defeat, ridicule, and loss ^[4].