"The system worked"

How Biden came to terms with a setback in 1987.

The New York Times reports President Biden’s explanation for last week’s debate performance. He gave it in a meeting with Democratic donors. His staff originally had said—during the debate and for some days afterward—that Biden had a cold:

But Mr. Biden offered a different reason to the donors on Tuesday night. He referred to his decision to travel to France for several days two weeks before the debate and return to the United States before heading back to Europe for the Group of 7 summit in Italy.

He decided to make that cross-Atlantic trip back and forth, Mr. Biden said, blaming himself for not having “listened to my staff,” which he implied had told him not to do that. He said the decision caused him to be tired during the debate.

It wasn’t immediately clear how to verify this, or whether it meshes with the staff’s explanation. Whatever the reason for his difficulties onstage, his supporters seem to be asking for some positive action to answer the larger question of his fitness of office. At this writing he has scheduled a TV interview on ABC Friday.

One thing that Biden did manage in telling his story of the debate was taking responsibility. He declined to blame the failure on his staff as some have, or on ill health (and also, as his critics will note, not directly blaming his age, except to the extent that age would be a factor in his travel exhaustion).

There is much to discuss here. But the part about responsibility caught my attention.

In 1987, Biden’s first presidential campaign flamed out over allegations of plagiarism.

He came to take responsibility for that failure too, though he also felt the press failed to see things his way. We talked about this twenty years later on NPR, during his second bid for the presidency.

I quote this old interview at length because I found the entire 2007 conversation illuminating; I’ve often looked back on it as a reference point while covering events relating to Biden. It’s an interview about a memoir, so we range across his life. At one moment he is demonstrating his childhood stutter; in another he is talking of feeling lost after a family tragedy. Still later, he is unhappy that I have asked about his vote that authorized US military action in Iraq. He wants it to be understood as a vote for peace, not war.

You know, I love you guys. How you hardly ever get it right—

But the most remarkable passage is about the 1987 disappointment. It differs from most political interviews I have done; rather than dodging or deflecting, he describes himself coming to terms with what went wrong.

INSKEEP: You did end up, at a fairly young age - in your mid-40s - running for president...

Sen. BIDEN: That's right.

INSKEEP: ...for the first time...

Sen. BIDEN: Yes.

INSKEEP: ...and being forced to withdraw from that race because of news stories about quoting someone without attribution in a speech, because of quoting someone without proper footnoting in a paper when you were in law school. I wonder if—regardless of whether you think that you were innocent or guilty as charged—whether you think it's appropriate that people look into the biographical incidents and search out the character of presidential candidates, as opposed to their positions.

Sen. BIDEN: Totally appropriate. Totally appropriate.

INSKEEP: It was appropriate for people to look into that.

Sen. BIDEN: It was appropriate to look into it, but I wish they had looked into it. They didn't look into it. And had they looked into it, they may have reached a - and some did, ultimately - a more balanced conclusion. But the bottom line was, I made a mistake. I did not, in the debate in Iowa, attribute what I said. And it was born out of my arrogance. I did not prepare for the debate. I mean, it's stupid. I didn't deserve to president. I didn't deserve to be president just based on the Richter scale of was I tough enough and did I understand the process.

INSKEEP: Wait a minute. Are you saying the system worked?

Sen. BIDEN: The system worked.

INSKEEP: In shoving you out before you even got to the election year?

Sen. BIDEN: The system worked. In a strange way, it did work.

Here we are decades later, and in the system is functioning again, for better or worse. The candidates were put on display, and people reacted. We don’t know the end of this episode—how Biden stays in the race as he has said he will, or how Trump is ultimately seen. We only know a moment in time. Trump gained in some polls, and Biden missed an opportunity his campaign had been counting on to reshape the campaign.

One thing that differs about the system today is that politicians do not withdraw as readily in the face of a setback as they did in 1987. The style of the moment is to double down. Trump is a champion at this, and portrays it as a virtue, and he is far from the only one following the style. Polarized politics ensures the loyalty of many voters no matter what. Biden, too, can stay on knowing that Democrats will swing behind him in what they see as a crisis; as his aides note, he has stayed steady in the face of disasters before, including in his 2020 campaign. But he also has made a strength out of not following the latest styles.

Thanks for reading Differ We Must. The 2007 interview is here.