In June 1974 — 49 years ago — Joe Biden sat for a profile in Washingtonian by Kitty Kelley. Biden, never a man who could control his mouth, got some blowback at the time for the naked ambition on display.
Some things don’t change. He already had a distinctive way of expressing the loss of his first wife: “’Let me show you my favorite picture of her,’ he says, holding up a snapshot of Neilia in a bikini. ‘She had the best body of any woman I ever saw. She looks better than a Playboy bunny, doesn’t she?'” His staff was already using his family tragedy as a shield: “Biden’s staff still protects him. The few reporters admitted in the past eighteen months have been asked to concentrate on Joe Biden, Senator, rather than Joe Biden, tragic figure.” He was already doing this, too: “Biden tells . . . a joke with an antisemitic punchline and asks that it be off the record.”
He was already getting fawned over: “Named one of the ten best-dressed men in the Senate, Joe Biden looks like Robert Redford’s Great Gatsby in natty pin-striped suits, elegant silk ties, and black tassled loafers.” (Then again, read the first New York Times profile of Donald Trump, from 1976: “He is tall, lean and blond, with dazzling white teeth, and he looks ever so much like Robert Redford.” Maybe the writers just leaned too hard on the same few analogies.) “Even before his election Time magazine compared Joe Biden and his beautiful young family to the Kennedys and talked about Presidential possibilities some day. The Irish Catholic similarities were obvious. Both campaigned with glamor. Both were sexy. Both were elected to Congress before the age of 30. And both were struck by tragedy.”
At 31, Biden was already talking about becoming the big guy:
In fact, he says he might consider running for President. “My wife always wanted me to be on the Supreme Court,” he says. “But while I know I can be a good Senator, and I know I can be a good President, I do know that I could never be another Oliver Wendell Holmes. I know I could have easily made the White House with Neilia. And my family still expects me to be there one of these days. With them behind me anything can happen.” . . . “Assuming for a moment that I was here like most of the other people you have in here who are candidates for President. If we assume I am a candidate for President and you are deciding whether or not to work for me, I could stay here all night answering your questions about how I stand on the issues. But the fact remains that you will not have raised the issues which will be the ones I will be dealing with in my last year as President.”
The talk was theoretical, but no one in that audience doubted that Senator Biden would be coming back to them in a few years as a Presidential contender. . . . Senator Biden does not dismiss the subject. “Let’s do wait and see,” he says. “Come back and talk to me in a few years. By then I’ll be old enough to run. Right now, I’m too young. I’m probably the only Senator you can really believe when he says he’s not planning on running for President, at least not in 1976.”
Everybody around him encouraged this and expected it to happen, even before he’d actually accomplished anything in the Senate (he would end up waiting until 1987 to launch his first presidential bid):
His sister Valerie says we will all get that chance one of these days. “Joey is going to be President someday. He was made to be in the White House. There is no one else who can lead the country. Just you wait and see.” She believes her brother is another John F. Kennedy, and she’s not alone…Some veteran political reporters believe that Joe Biden is much more determined to be President than Jack Kennedy ever was at 31. “Biden knows what he’s doing and where he’s going,” said one. “Kennedy pussyfooted around at that age. I much prefer the Biden style to that JFK cat-and-mouse game.”
Most journalists I talked with agreed that Joe Biden would run for President some day. One said, “There isn’t a Senator alive who doesn’t secretly believe he should be enthroned next to that little red phone in the Oval office, and Biden is no exception. But I think he might win someday.” A wire service reporter sizes up Biden’s chances as “better than 60-40.” He added, Can you imagine what they’ll be when he’s old enough to run and people know who he is?”
He was dating a female reporter at the time, and talking about marriage in terms inseparable from his ambitions:
Later he talks about remarriage. “I do indeed want to get married again. I hate the image of the gay, young bachelor about town. That’s just not my style. I am not a womanizer.” . . . Senator Biden’s friends say he is looking for more than a wife and mother. “He also needs to find a First Lady,” says one, “a woman who enjoys politics and will help him get to the White House. I don’t know if he’ll end up marrying Francie Barnard but I do know that the woman he marries will he as rich and as pretty as she is.”
At the time, Biden was also trying to take pains to paint himself as a moderate in spite of his own voting record — even criticizing Roe v. Wade, which he now treats as a sacrament:
“Adlai Stevenson is a good man but he’s much more liberal than I am.”…Biden resents being called the bright young liberal of the New Left. “I hate that picture,” he says, “and I don’t care how that damn Americans for Democratic Action rates me. Those ADA ratings get us into so much trouble that a lot of us sit around thinking up ways to vote conservative just so we don’t come out with a liberal rating. When it comes to civil rights and civil liberties, I’m a liberal but that’s it. I’m really quite conservative on most other issues. My wife said I was the most socially conservative man she had ever known. I’m a screaming liberal when it comes to senior citizens because I really think they are getting screwed. I’m a liberal on health care because I believe it is a birth right of every human being — not just some damn privilege to be meted out to a few people. But when it comes to issues like abortion, amnesty, and acid, I’m about as liberal as your grandmother. I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far. I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body. I support a limited amnesty, and I don’t think marijuana should be legalized. Now, if you still think I’m a liberal, let me tell you that I support the draft. I’m scared to death of a professional army. I vote my own way and it is not always with the Democrats. I did vote for George McGovern, of course, but I would have voted for Mickey Mouse against Richard Nixon. I despise that man.” [Emphasis added.]