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

for Beau and for the country. Back in Washington, Natalie’s class went to the capital to tour the White House. Joe and Jill hosted her class for pizza at the vice president’s residence.

In May, there seemed to be hope that the latest cancer treatment could work. Beau moved to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center near Washington, where Joe could visit him twice a day. One evening, Joe arrived at the hospital eager to tell Beau about a visitor to the White House: the singer-songwriter Elton John.

Joe reminded Beau that the two of them and Hunter used to sing along with Elton John on the car radio. There in the hospital room, he sang to Beau: “ ‘But the biggest kick I ever got / Was doing a thing called the Crocodile Rock.’ ” Beau’s eyes were closed, but he smiled.

During the next few weeks, Joe Biden clung to the hope that Beau could survive his illness and the harsh treatments. Sometimes Beau seemed a little better, sometimes worse. Vice President Biden continued to work.

The crisis in Ukraine was mounting. The country had been plagued by corruption for years, and Joe Biden had tried to encourage the government to control it. Now Russian troops were still on the eastern border with heavy artillery. Three months earlier, Russian president Vladimir Putin had signed an agreement to withdraw his troops, but he still hadn’t done it. Worse, he seemed to be preparing for a fresh push into Ukraine.

On Friday, May 30, Joe and the rest of the Bidens gathered at the hospital for a conference with the doctors. The doctors presented the medical details but didn’t say what they added up to. Finally Howard, the only doctor in the Biden family, said, “You have to tell them the truth.” The truth was, there was no more hope.

At a little before eight o’clock that evening, Beau’s heart stopped beating. Later that night, Joe wrote in his diary: It happened. My God, my boy. My beautiful boy.

Beau’s memorial service was held on Saturday, June 6, 2015, at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Wilmington. It was a public event, recorded by TV cameras, since Beau as well as his father had been a public figure. Hunter and Ashley both spoke touchingly about their brother, and President Obama gave the main eulogy. Barack Obama did not often let his emotions show, but this day he spoke from the heart. He praised Beau. He told Joe with tears in his eyes how much Joe’s friendship meant to him.

Obama ended by saying that he and Michelle and their girls considered themselves honorary members of the Biden family. “We’re always here for you,” he promised. “We always will be. My word as a Biden.” As Barack left the podium, he and Joe embraced each other.

Joe Biden was still considering a run for president in 2016. In January 2017 he would be seventy-four, older than any other president-elect in the history of the US, so maybe this was his last chance. Beau had believed in him so deeply; Beau had declared that it was his father’s duty to run. “You’ve got to run. I want you to run.”

However, President Obama advised Biden against running. Obama thought that Joe and his family had been through too much, with Beau’s illness and death, to take on the huge stress of a presidential campaign. He also thought that Hillary Clinton had a better chance of beating the Republican candidate, whoever that turned out to be.

In spite of Obama’s advice, in September 2015, Biden’s team convinced him that he did have a decent chance. Joe began appearing and giving speeches, and he felt good about it. He was fired up, jogging through applauding crowds and speaking expressively on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Then the political attacks began, and Biden realized how nasty the campaign was going to get. There were rumors that Joe was using sympathy for Beau’s death to boost his run for president. Late in October, he painfully decided to end his campaign. He made the announcement the next day in the White House Rose Garden, with Jill on one side and Barack Obama on the other.

Vice President Joe Biden kept on working. He knew it was his duty, and he knew it was what Beau would have wanted him to do. In December 2015 he flew to Ukraine to speak to the Ukrainian parliament. This country was a struggling democracy, threatened by Russia and by its own corruption in the government.

Meanwhile, seventeen Republicans competed to be nominated as the party’s presidential candidate. At first, one of the least likely candidates seemed to be Donald J. Trump. Trump was a TV reality show star and real-estate magnate, and he had no previous experience in the military or in politics. Nevertheless, he won the primary elections in state after state. By the end of May, Trump was guaranteed the Republican nomination.

Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination, seriously challenged only by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. During the summer and fall of 2016, public opinion polls seemed to show that she would win the general election. And Trump continued to behave in ways that would seem to doom his election chances.

Donald Trump made openly racist remarks. During a rally in Iowa, he belittled Senator John McCain, a decorated war hero. Later, Trump disrespected the father of a soldier who had died in combat. A video was discovered in which he’d bragged about sexually assaulting women, and it went viral. Some political observers thought that the Republican Party, represented by a candidate as unqualified for the presidency and as divisive as Trump, was doomed.

And yet Donald Trump’s message had a strong appeal, especially to white working-class voters. They felt disrespected by politicians like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the “liberal elite.” They felt uneasy about the way American culture was changing, and Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” promised to restore the good old days.

Most important, Trump promised to bring back