He sees himself as generally optimistic about America’s tormented “battle for the soul”: at 80, Joe Biden is again attacking the White House.
A victory would carry him to power until his 86th birthday, unheard of.
Obstinate if not flamboyant, good-natured if not charismatic, Joe Biden has behind him a life of bitter political failures and personal dramas. Paradoxically, he drew an unusual confidence in his lucky star.
“We are the United States of America for the love of God. There is nothing we cannot do”, often says the 46th president, who then seems to talk as much about himself as about his country.
In 2017, Joe Biden seemed destined for a peaceful retirement and relative oblivion when a far-right parade in the streets of Charlottesville (Virginia, south), in August, decided him to lead the “battle for the soul of America”, and against Donald Trump.
During his inauguration on January 20, 2021 on the steps of the Capitol, stormed a few days earlier by supporters of his Republican predecessor, Joe Biden promised a “new beginning”.
Senator for thirty-six years, vice-president of Barack Obama for eight years, he is president of an America haunted by violence: that of social and racial inequalities, that of political attacks, that of deaths by overdose and killings by firearm.
The remedy, he says, lies in part in the American dream of prosperity, that “pursuit of happiness” enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.
Convinced that democracy is damaged at the end of difficult months, Joe Biden wants to restore his “dignity” to America “forgotten” by globalization.
To this electorate that Donald Trump, a billionaire born into a wealthy family, was able to seduce, Joseph “Robinette” Biden Junior repeats that he is a child of the “middle class” and a proud descendant of Irish immigrants – he also treated himself to a trip to the lands of his ancestors in April, as a return to his roots before throwing himself into the countryside.
Born on November 20, 1942 in Scranton, Pennsylvania (northeast), the eldest of four children, “Joey” did not grow up in poverty, but his entrepreneur father experienced financial bumps.
A small job as a lifeguard in a neighborhood with a black majority will launch his long dialogue with African-Americans, to whom he will owe, in large part, his electoral success.
Which are not expected. After studying law, and without having fought in Vietnam, the slender young man with a broad smile became in 1972, at the age of 29, a senator from Delaware for the Democratic Party.
A month after the election, his wife Neilia dies in a car accident, with their still baby daughter. The new senator is sworn in by the hospital bed of his two surviving boys, Beau and Hunter.
America will remember this sad image in 2015, when Joe Biden, devastated by grief, will bury his eldest darling Beau, who died of cancer.
These intimate tragedies have shaped a president who, after a shooting, after a disaster, becomes “chief comforter”. His empathy, but also his blunders, will become trademarks.
He has neither the oratory fluency of Barack Obama nor the physical presence of Donald Trump, but Joe Biden makes up for in stubbornness what he lacks in charisma. As a child, he says he corrected a stutter on his own by reciting poetry, obviously Irish.
Three times he stormed the White House. In 1988, the attempt was cut short due to accusations of plagiarism. In 2008, he became vice-president.
When it is his turn to choose, he will make Kamala Harris the first woman, and the first Asian and African American, vice president.
Elected on a promise to return to normal after the pandemic and Trump, Joe Biden shows himself, at the start of his term, up to the task: America is vaccinating en masse, its economy is starting to roar again, it “is back” on the international scene.
The president cultivates an image of an average American, loving ice cream and Corvettes. But Joe Biden is also a millionaire, who offers his granddaughter an almost princely wedding at the White House.
And too bad if the press growls because it is kept away: we do not touch the family of the president. With his second wife Jill Biden, mother of his daughter Ashley and university professor, first First Lady to exercise a professional activity, Joe Biden escapes almost every weekend to find his clan in his house in Wilmington (Delaware).
This fervent Catholic, nevertheless defender of the right to abortion, only leaves for mass.
If he sings the praises of the late Beau, Joe Biden also wants to be an understanding father for his younger brother. With his old addictions, Hunter Biden is a target of the conservative camp who accuses him of having carried out shady business in Ukraine and China.
In the summer of 2021, the relative state of grace enjoyed by Joe Biden ends in the dust of Kabul airport. The Americans watch dumbfounded a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, and then take the full brunt of a historic surge in inflation.
Joe Biden’s popularity rating is dropping, and will always remain anemic thereafter.
The president, now, with his stiff gait, his frail frame and his moments of confusion, turns 80. The reassuring medical reports published in November 2021 and then in February 2023 do not change anything.
Joe Biden has all the trouble in the world to share his optimism, despite some undeniable successes.
So when he orchestrates the Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There is no doubt that the images of his extraordinary visit to kyiv will be abundantly recycled in his campaign clips…
Or when he pushes through gigantic economic reforms to stand up to a conquering China, despite controlling Congress by a hair’s breadth at the start of his term.
He must also deal with an ultra-conservative Supreme Court, a legacy of his predecessor, which in 2022 blasts the constitutional right to abortion.
Is this the explosion of this decision? Or the aversion to some candidates loyal to Donald Trump? In November 2022, in the midterm elections, the Republican Party did not inflict Joe Biden the expected crushing defeat.
So here he is again on the campaign trail to “save the soul of America”. Or at least to fulfill that unembellished promise made in March 2022 before the United States Congress.
“Everything will be fine,” he had said. “We are going to be okay.”
25/04/2023 12:33:56 – Washington (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
