NEWSWEEK: In your book, you write a lot about some of the personal hurdles you’ve overcome, but I’d like to get a sense of how your wife and daughter’s death [in a 1972 auto accident] affected you as a politician. JOSEPH BIDEN: Talking about my wife and daughter’s death is the hardest thing. It wasn’t until the very end that I wrote about it. How could I write about these events of my life without talking about the most consequential one? It is still difficult to talk about. But what it did teach me was how incredibly resilient human beings are. From my perspective, it sensitized me in a way I’ve never been sensitized before.
In your book you note that many of the problems that you discussed in running for the Senate in 1972 are still with us today. Why is it that our political system—with you in it—has not progressed during the past 35 years? In many ways it has progressed. The things I most wanted to see happen did not happen, like public financing of elections. But there are a lot of other things that have happened. We have a crime bill that worked and actually reduced crime. We are more enlightened in the way we’ve dealt with nuclear weapons in the world, though with this administration we might revert back. We made real progress in making the world safer. But then along came [President George W.] Bush. And the lesson that taught me is that nothing is permanent.
One of the striking things that I drew from your book was the similarity between your run for the presidency in 1988 and Obama’s run for office 20 years later. Fair comparison? There are definitely similarities. One thing is, I’m waging the same campaign today, but it’s a lot harder to wage it when you are over 60 than when you are in your mid-40s. You are granted, when you’re young, an enthusiasm. You’re granted a sense of idealism, but you are also perceived as not being quite ready. And he suffers from that perception, as I did.
In a recent NPR interview, you said that, in retrospect, you weren’t ready for the presidency in ‘88. Is Obama not ready now? I think he can be ready, but right now I don’t believe he is. It’s awful hard, with only a little bit of experience to have a clear sense of what you would do on the most critical issues facing us today: what to do about promoting America’s place in the world. It is not something that lends itself to—the trite phrase is—it’s not something that lends itself to on-the-job training. You have to have a clear notion of what you want to do. When power is handed off from George Bush to the next president, the next president will be left with virtually no margin for error.
In your book, you seem a bit peeved at your treatment by the press. Regarding allegations of plagiarism during your 1988 campaign you write, “These reporters who kept calling, none of whom had any personal experience of me, were starting to see the emergence of a pattern … a character flaw.” Is the media too lazy? First of all, let me say, and I’m not trying to be a wise guy, I have never complained about what was my mistake. … The part that disappointed me about the press, with the exception of a couple of people, is that no one actually went to my law school [to check the facts]. Reporters are in a very difficult business. Because if someone breaks a major story, you don’t have time any longer to go do what happened 40 years ago. … I have never thought anyone in the press did anything personal. I never took it that they were out to get Joe Biden. I think it was the nature of the medium. So one, I do think there is a combination of not having much time. And two, some reporters, like some of my guys, are lazy.
You once called Slobodan Milosevic a war criminal to his face. You also told Dick Cheney that, were he not a constitutional officer, the president should fire him. So when it comes to the mistakes made in Iraq, why should impeachment of President Bush be off the table? It shouldn’t be. But impeachment like everything else is a matter of priorities and responsibility. In order to move on impeachment now, we would be put in a position at a very, very delicate time in our nation’s history, of having necessarily to take our eye off the ball on a host of other things that will have longer-lasting impact on the security of this country. As a practical matter, it sucks all the oxygen out of the air. We would effectively be paralyzed for the next six months or longer. … The alternative, and it’s taken me time to think through, I think we should be acquiring and accumulating all the data that is appropriate for possibly bringing criminal charges against members of this administration at a later date.
When, right after 9/11, you heard of Richard Perle’s plan to drop 17,000 paratroopers into Baghdad in one night, capture or kill Saddam, and then wipe out his Republican Guard, why didn’t you spread the word that people were ginning up some interesting ideas about invading Iraq? No. 1: at the time I was told in confidence. No. 2: he made it clear he was actually trying to solicit my support as a “muscular Democrat”—whatever the hell that meant—for the notion. It was clear that it hadn’t been decided yet. It was a policy pushed by, I assume, Richard and others. In going back to that period, I allude to that, without mentioning him. … I do have to take responsibility for miscalculating the degree to which this president was capable of taking the wrong advice and being incompetent. I never thought he would choose the route that he chose. And once, having chosen it, to go ahead with such little thought as to what would happen when he moved.
Before President Bush’s first trip to Europe—both in life and in office—you wrote that he jokingly yelled at Colin Powell, “Remember to pack clean underwear?” What’s that about? This is the same kind of thing that [former Treasury secretary] Paul O’Neill talked about in the Ron Suskind book [“The Price of Loyalty”]. O’Neill made the case that the president is a bully and bullies always give you nicknames. They want to demonstrate that they’re in charge and calling the shots. This was the president’s way of saying, “Colin, I’m your boss.” And all Powell could do was smile in front of everyone and say, “You see how I’m treated, Senator.” I find it all somewhat degrading.
Which Republican in the current field scares you the most? I could tell you off the record but it sounds too presumptuous to answer something like that. Plus, I think we can beat them all.
What about Rudy Giuliani? Couldn’t he put more states in play than any other Republican? No. Giuliani’s signature position on national security is the place he’s most vulnerable, based on how little he actually knows about foreign policy.
Would you feel unfulfilled in your career if, as some observers are predicting, you ended up not as president but as secretary of State under the next Democratic president? I promise you, I don’t want to be secretary of State. If I did, this is certainly not the best way to go about it. I’m going to be taking sharper and sharper exceptions with my colleagues. And it won’t be easy to then turn around and ask to be secretary of State. The truth is, I will be upset only if I don’t say what I think during this campaign. I can die a happy man not hearing “Hail to the Chief.”
