Joe Biden by Beatrice Gormley (free ebook reader for iphone TXT) 📕

matching Biden’s exact words with Kinnock’s exact words. It made Joe’s stomach hurt to watch it.

It seemed that the campaign manager of one of Biden’s Democratic opponents, Michael Dukakis, had tipped off reporters about Biden’s slip. Soon there was a chorus accusing Biden of plagiarism—using someone else’s words as if they were his own. The media dug up another instance: at the California Democratic Convention in January, Biden had given a speech that included some words of Robert Kennedy’s from twenty years before. A speechwriter had put the phrase in without telling Biden where it came from.

The media—“the sharks,” as Ted Kaufman, now Biden’s chief of staff, called them—had gone into a feeding frenzy. For more than a week the accusations of plagiarism grew louder, as Biden and his team tried to ignore them. A columnist in the New York Times called him “Plagiarizing Joe.”

Jill was even more upset than Joe was. “Of all the things to attack you on. Your integrity?”

Meanwhile, even before the Judiciary Committee hearings on Robert Bork began, Senator Ted Kennedy gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor against Bork. Biden loved and admired Kennedy, but this was just what he’d been afraid of. Kennedy, as well as other Democrats, was giving the public the impression that the Democrats on the committee had already made up their minds to block Judge Bork’s appointment.

On Tuesday, September 15, Chairman Joe Biden opened the Bork hearings in the Russell Senate Caucus Room. The hearings got off to a good start, and Biden felt confident that the Democrats could make a good case for rejecting Bork.

Then reporters dug up a mistake Biden had made twenty-two years before. It was his carelessness, back in his first year of law school, when he’d failed a technical writing course. He’d turned in a paper without giving proper credit to a source. Of course Biden’s law school professors hadn’t thought he was trying to cheat, but the media didn’t care about that. What they cared about was making a good story, the story of Joe the Plagiarizer, even better.

And what Biden cared about, more than his campaign for president, was the damage the story might do to the so-important Bork hearings. At a private meeting, he asked the Judiciary Committee to choose another member as chair. “Absolutely not,” said Republican Strom Thurmond. “This is ridiculous,” said Ted Kennedy. Joe was deeply touched that his fellow senators had confidence in him, and he went on with the hearings.

But in the following days, the story in the media grew and grew: Biden was a plagiarizer, a liar, a blowhard, an empty suit. A news helicopter hovered over the Biden home, the Station, and reporters camped out near the house. Ashley, only six years old, had to go off to school in the mornings being filmed by TV cameras.

Finally, on the evening of September 22, Joe Biden called a council at the Station to decide what to do. The trusted inner circle in the living room included Jill, Beau, and Hunter; Joe’s mother and father; his sister, Valerie, and her husband, Jack; and Joe’s brothers, Jimmy and Frank. Biden’s chief of staff, Ted Kaufman, and a few other trusted advisors were also there to help.

As Joe paced the living room, the discussion went back and forth. Beau, now a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, and Hunter, a senior at Archmere, knew how much “My word as a Biden” meant to their father. They urged him to defend his honor on the campaign trail. But Joe had also given his “word as a Biden” to do his sworn duty as senator and chair of the Judiciary Committee.

Biden was torn. At one point during the evening, he stopped pacing and asked his mother, Jean, what she thought. She answered, “I think it’s time to get out.”

The next day, during a break in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Judge Bork, Biden stepped outside for a press announcement. With Jill at his side, he told the gathered journalists that he was dropping out of the race for president. He was angry that he had to make the choice, but he believed it was more important for him “to keep the Supreme Court from moving in a direction that I believe to be truly harmful.”

Joe’s sons were angry for him too. After he’d quit the race for the presidency, the three of them went to a football game at the University of Pennsylvania. One of the crowd recognized Senator Biden and started a chant about “Plagiarizing Joe.” Hunter went after the heckler with his fists, and Joe and Beau had to restrain him.

At the end of the hearings in October, the full Senate voted not to confirm Bork, 58–42. A few months later President Reagan filled the empty seat on the Supreme Court with Anthony Kennedy, who would turn out to be a moderate influence. But bitter feelings toward the Democrats, on the part of Judge Bork and his Republican supporters, remained for many years.

Joe Biden was now free from the stress of campaigning for president. His family was out of the glaring spotlight, and the pressure from the Bork hearings was gone. Still, his headaches continued to plague him. One day near the beginning of 1988, while working out in the Senate gym, Biden felt a stab of pain in his neck. He left the gym and boarded the train to Wilmington as usual. But now, besides the pain in his neck, he felt numb on his right side, and his legs felt heavy.

These were signs of something very wrong. But Biden shook them off. He was determined to show the world that Joe Biden was not a quitter. As his father had always said, “If you get knocked down, get up.” The next day, Biden saw a doctor, got a neck brace, and went on with his schedule of meetings, travel, and speeches.

But on the night of February 9, in a motel room in Rochester, New