On The Amtrak To Wilmington With Joe Biden
One of the things we've been told about Joe Biden lately is that he takes the Amtrak home to Wilmington at the end of the day. The day I shared a car with him, I saw for myself that he doesn't just take the train. He works hard, and what I saw made an indelible impression.
It was late on a Friday afternoon in the mid-nineties, and I had finished some work in Washington and was meeting my wife up in New York for the weekend. I was in the next to last row of an Amtrak car when Senator Biden took the seat behind me. Soon after we left the station, he got on his cellphone. While a small part of my brain soaked in the newspaper, most of my attention was on what I was hearing.
This guy was working hard, and he was very, very smart. He had at least two conversations. One was with who I presumed to be a Senate staffer, and the other was with another Senator. The conversations focused on language in some domestic legislation. I was surprised and impressed with the level to which he drilled down. This was not just a big picture guy who left it to the staff to iron out the details. He had a deep and intricate knowledge not only of the subject matter of the legislation, but of how small changes in the bill could have huge impacts on what it was he was trying to accomplish.
What he was trying to accomplish was central to his efforts. What I witnessed was an earnestness, and a total lack of cynicism, that took me by surprise. This wasn't about anything other than getting the best results from this piece of legislation.
The other thing that impressed me about this guy was how he talked to the staffer, and to the other Senator. The tone with each was the same. He was collaborative, conversational, practical, and he didn't pull rank. He showed each of them respect, and gave them reason to take ownership in the issues they were discussing. At my law firm, we insist that everyone from our runners to our senior partners are treated with the same level of respect, so there is very little that impresses me more than to see someone who appears to operate under the same creed.
In the years that followed, I noticed that whenever I saw Joe Biden on television, he would address whoever he was talking to, or talking with, the same way he addressed the staffer and the other Senator. Simply put, he is who he is, and it's easy to understand why he has colleagues who like him on both sides of the aisle. There were post-9/11 days when there was no room for debate with the neocon view of the world, and I worried deeply about what was happening to our country. I remember the first times I started feeling the least bit hopeful again about where we could go as a nation came when I would see Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel appear together on a Sunday talk show. Here were two men, two patriots, from different parties who could reach consensus on what we needed to do to get out of the mess we were in, and realized that the consensus was more important than the partisan divide.
By 2007, during the first Democratic debates, my personal choices were, in order, Obama and Biden. (As you can imagine, I'm a happy guy today) My problem then with anybody but Obama was that Biden, Edwards, Clinton and most of the rest didn't try to stop the nonsense that would become the second Iraq war. But Joe Biden became, in my mind, the best of the rest. As Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, he has created a consensus among grownups, including Republicans Hagel and Lugar. Like almost every other candidate, he was wrong on Iraq, but his mind remained supple and open to real world solutions. (His idea of separating Iraq into three separate regions, Sunni, Shiite and Kurd, has, to a sad degree, come about de facto through ethic cleansing.) On the Judiciary Committee, he showed a level of leadership that should make those of us who believe in a right to privacy feel secure.
At his core, Joe Biden has proven to be the guy I saw on the Amtrak to Wilmington: a brilliant, earnest guy who knows how to treat people. When he got off the train that Friday night to go be with his family, I remember thinking that the people of Delaware were getting their money's worth. We all may get the chance to get our money's worth.
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Thanks for the view of Biden from the train. It fits with the gut impression I've always had of him. I'm so happy with this ticket. Two good men and if we can just get through November 4, we get to have them in our oval office.
By the way - he's always gone home to Delaware evey night. He'll be required to live in Washington now, right?
Yeah, and the Secret Service may not be too thrilled with Amtrak - but he'll be able to get home frequently. Comes with the job...
You know, people keep talking about his "gaffes." Tell me that we all don't make gaffes all the time. It makes us human, makes him human and well, one of us.
You go, Joe, and hold onto your "human-ness" and your humanity.
If I was running the Obama/Biden campaign, I'd be praying for McCain to try to make a big deal out of some kind of irrelevant gaffe. I'd make a commercial with the gaffe and McCain trying to make something of it, and then I'd show what all has happened to our country in the last 18 months since this race started - and I'd end with "Here's what's happened in America since we started this race - and John McCain wants to talk about this. Apparently, a silly gaffe like that is what McCain thinks is important." Then I'd throw out about 5 or 6 things Barack and Joe want to do - to help solve America's problems.
I'd be BEGGING for a bunch more of these stupid commercials about stupid, irrelevant non-issues.
I hope somebody in Obama/Biden's campaign reads this message, and does exactly that SShaw490.
The best way to deal with the irrelevant crap that McCain is going to throw at Obama/Biden over the next month or two is to address it immediately, make a complete joke over their trying to make it into a big deal with this level of crap going on in the real world and election, and then address the real world.
Obama's web site has an "what's your idea" selection.
Why don't you send it?
Meanwhile, look at his "Issues" tab. Then look at McCain's "Issues" tab.
From the get-go, I too was rooting for Biden, then Obama, so yesterday's announcement was a dream come true.
Not taking anything away from Obama, but if you really look at it objectively, the dems would be much further ahead if Biden was at the top of the ticket.
Joe Biden was out after Iowa, so how exactly was he supposed to get to the top of the ticket? Biden complements Obama and vice versa. The ticket is the way it's supposed to be, let's just make it happen in November.
If Biden lived in the western USA then more people would have heard of him years ago.
That is all that stopped Biden .
I will always agree with you on this . From the look at the polls all the way through, I am still angry with the media and how they so early on focused only on BO, HC and a little on JE leaving the big boys like Biden and Richardson basically off stage while they focused on such inane topics. Our world and our country is a mess and all we got was someone who said over and over not this year, not this time and we want change and got away with not really defining much of any of it and not proving to most of us that he really knows as much as his most fervent supporters think he does. At least the actual smartest on in the group is now on the ticket if only in the shotgun seat.
I like Biden and I think he's an excellent choice, but he tried two or three times for the presidency and couldn't make it.
Biden was my first choice early on, but none of the Dem candidates in the primaries ever had a chance except for Obama and Clinton because the MSM arranged it that way. They refused to pay any attention to any candidate other than those two, except for an occasional nod to Edwards. The MSM talking heads dumbed it all down into a horse race between the woman and the black guy. I remember there was even a debate when the moderators treated the other candidates as if they weren't even on the stage, and Joe was forced to make a comment about it because he had been ignored question after question, but he did so in a humorous way. He always behaves with class.
Superb post. It's so nice to break out of the "crisis of the minute" for a while and look at the essence of what these people are about, who they are. These ridiculous "Joe said this in 2003, Barack said this in 2005", gotcha ads have just become absurd. Both Barack Obama and Joe Biden are superb choices for America. Period. Maybe Hillary would be good. Maybe there are other good choices. But it's going to be Barack/Joe or it's going to be McCain/somebody and there's no decision to make there.
Hillary's demeanor on the outside is good at a Commander-in-Chief, but what we have learned about her from the leaked memos, she showed no leadership qualities running her campaign. Bill C*linton made the decision to run the 3AM ad. Who would run the White House had she won? How do we expect that she would run the country? This is not about being a woman or a Black man, this about a person's ability to make the tough decisions and lead others; she proved she wasn't good at it.
I like Joe Biden, although I am disappointed he didn't find a competent woman. That would have my dream ticket.
great story. thank you for sharing it.
Thansk fro sharing the story....Obama trusts Biden completely.....and amont the Democrats he was the best choice for Governing USA.
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