A book by Joe Biden
Random House, 2007, 365 pages
“Are we going to be okay?”
A woman in Dubuque asks Joe Biden the question on all our minds.
He surely has been hearing the country’s anxiety a lot on the campaign trail. Biden is the running mate of Barack Obama on the Democratic presidential ticket leading as the nation goes to vote today.
Say what you will about the always angry, fearful, extended campaigns. They expose our next officeholders to the national mood, the mind of the nation, the emotions we all feel.
But we need a book such as Promises to peer through political feelings into personal poetry within our collective fate. Even so public a figure as Biden otherwise gets eclipsed as a real person by White House elections.
This time around we are united in apprehension but not much else.
Without economic security, we have no national security –– at home or abroad.
Without confidence, we are not America. Not really. Not as we all know and love her.
Sen. Biden’s personal and political autobiography couldn’t come at a better time. Clearly the original intent is support of his own presidential campaign. No matter. We still need to know the heart of the likely next vice president.
It’s sound.
We know this man. Oh, he’s from Delaware, not necessarily the center of our universe.
Still, he’s made of our kind of stuff –– a good student when he applies himself, not a great one. A good thinker with strong feelings, not an arrogant and cold person. A self-made middle class product of genteel poverty, not a rich man’s son.
And he earns our respect for national legislation to support cops and protect women.
He’s the guy who stops Bork-like mistakes on the Supreme Court and green lights good judge nominees.
He’s the conscience behind stopping the Balkan bloodbath. He’s the guy who stands in line with GIs for a turn at a bucket bath in Afghanistan when there’s no running water. He’s the origin of good ideas about bad futures in Iraq.
Joe Biden also is a man of tragedy. Word comes of his first wife’s death and of their daughter’s and of the fearful injuries to two sons in a car wreck while he is not yet sworn in as one of the youngest U.S. Senators ever elected.
He is the survivor of aneurisms.
Politically he is the survivor of his own mistakes, misjudgments and misstatements.
The thing about survivors is not what happens to them or what they do wrong. It’s how they press on, how they learn from their past and –– as with Joe Biden –– how they build a new family life and a fresh public life.
This book’s title is a Robert Frost line ideal for a politician. The next two lines are perfect for a nation pausing in mid-destiny as we are: “And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.”
Biden poetically reminds us we hold dear the values of compassion, honesty, integrity of thought, generosity, freedom and hope on our national journey.
So the very last words Promises to Keep addresses to us and to the woman in Dubuque is, “We’ll be okay.”
But we need a book such as Promises to peer through political feelings into personal poetry within our collective fate. Even so public a figure as Biden otherwise gets eclipsed as a real person by White House elections.
This time around we are united in apprehension but not much else.
Without economic security, we have no national security –– at home or abroad.
Without confidence, we are not America. Not really. Not as we all know and love her.
Sen. Biden’s personal and political autobiography couldn’t come at a better time. Clearly the original intent is support of his own presidential campaign. No matter. We still need to know the heart of the likely next vice president.
It’s sound.
We know this man. Oh, he’s from Delaware, not necessarily the center of our universe.
Still, he’s made of our kind of stuff –– a good student when he applies himself, not a great one. A good thinker with strong feelings, not an arrogant and cold person. A self-made middle class product of genteel poverty, not a rich man’s son.
And he earns our respect for national legislation to support cops and protect women.
He’s the guy who stops Bork-like mistakes on the Supreme Court and green lights good judge nominees.
He’s the conscience behind stopping the Balkan bloodbath. He’s the guy who stands in line with GIs for a turn at a bucket bath in Afghanistan when there’s no running water. He’s the origin of good ideas about bad futures in Iraq.
Joe Biden also is a man of tragedy. Word comes of his first wife’s death and of their daughter’s and of the fearful injuries to two sons in a car wreck while he is not yet sworn in as one of the youngest U.S. Senators ever elected.
He is the survivor of aneurisms.
Politically he is the survivor of his own mistakes, misjudgments and misstatements.
The thing about survivors is not what happens to them or what they do wrong. It’s how they press on, how they learn from their past and –– as with Joe Biden –– how they build a new family life and a fresh public life.
This book’s title is a Robert Frost line ideal for a politician. The next two lines are perfect for a nation pausing in mid-destiny as we are: “And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.”
Biden poetically reminds us we hold dear the values of compassion, honesty, integrity of thought, generosity, freedom and hope on our national journey.
So the very last words Promises to Keep addresses to us and to the woman in Dubuque is, “We’ll be okay.”
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