Joe Biden is the 46 th President of the United States.
The Democrat, from 78 years, he assumed power this Wednesday in an unusual ceremony due to the high security measures that were adopted to prevent possible attacks and riots.
Biden, who was US vice president during the presidency of Barack Obama , returns to the White House with the Urgent task of addressing the health and economic crisis caused by the coronavirus.
His arrival to the presidency also occurs at a time of great polarization and confrontation that culminated on January 6 in the seizure of the Capitol by violent supporters of the outgoing president, Donald Trump .
You we have some outstanding details of his personal and professional life sional.
1. A career politician
As Trump insisted on reminding him during the campaign for the elections on November 3, Biden has been wearing more than 47 years active in American politics .
His career in Washington DC began in the Senate in 1977, where he got a seat for the state of Delaware just after the 40 years.
His arrival in politics coincided with one of the most tragic moments of his life, which we will talk about later.
As a senator, Biden cemented the image of politician close, conciliatory and with the ability to reach agreements with his opponents.
He also made some not-so-praised decisions, such as the criminal justice law of 1994 drawn up by him and approved during the first government of Bill Clinton .
The reform aimed to put a stop to decades of increasing violence, but it resulted in mass incarcerations, with a special impact on the black and Latino population.
long career as a senator must be added his eight years as Obama’s vice president (2008 – 2017), with whom he built an excellent relationship beyond the professional.
This was the third time that he tried to reach the presidency of the country.
The first two were a failure, which made a sector of the Democrats wonder if it was the best asset to wrest the presidency from Trump.
The circumstances show that it was.
2. The tragedy that marked his political debut
Unfortunately, the joy of winning the Senate election did not last long.
A few weeks after his victory, his family suffered a serious traffic accident while he was in Washington DC interviewing staff for his new office.
His wife Neilia and the three children of the couple were returning from buying the Christmas tree when a truck carrying ears of corn collided with their car.
The woman, from 40 years, and the youngest daughter, Naomi, of 016 months old, died.
The children – Beau, 3, and Hunter, 2, were seriously injured and hospitalized, but survived.
A period of painful contrasts was beginning in Biden’s life.
3. Pain and empathy
Biden, who took the oath of office in the Senate in the hospital room where his son Beau was recovering, did not know whether to move on with his career as a senator.
He was devastated.
Raised in a working-class Catholic family, his father repeated a short but forceful mantra: “Get up, get up after you’ve been knocked down” .
That’s what he did. He decided to throw himself into work, but without leaving his children.
One of the outstanding anecdotes of his early years dates from that time as a senator: each day he traveled by train to and from his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and Washington DC, more than 300 kilometres daily to be close to his own.
This is how Biden developed a close bond with his children that only strengthened as they became adults.
In 1977, Biden married Jill, a university professor with whom he has a daughter, Ashley, and together with whom he managed to rebuild his family .
Many saw in Beau the possible successor or his father in politics.
After serving in Iraq with the National Guard in 2008, Beau was the attorney general of the state of Delaware for two terms with a brilliant career.
But in 2013 was diagnosed with a rare form of brain tumor and died two years later .
The loss of such close people shaped Biden’s character.
Those who know him best say that he has the “super power of empathy” , a trait that was underlined during the campaign and since his electoral victory to present him as the ideal person to close wounds and reunify the country.
4. Globalist and committed to the planet
Biden has defended the need to rebuild US relations with allied countries that, in his opinion, are have been affected during the Trump presidency.
He promises to return to the Paris Agreement to combat climate change and to the World Health Organization , for example.
He does not lack experience: he was at the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and presumes that he has “ known to all the major world leaders in recent 45 years”.
His decisions in the international sphere have not been without criticism.
In 1991 voted against the Gulf War; However, in 2003 was in favor of the invasion of Iraq and later became a critic of the involvement of the United States in that country.
Of a cautious nature, he recommended Obama not conducting the special forces operation that culminated in the death of Osama Bin Laden .
Republicans love to point out that Robert Gates, Obama’s former defense secretary, said that “there is no way that someone does not like Biden,” but that he has been “ wrong on almost every major national security issue and foreign policy that have occurred in the last four decades. ”
Gates recently noted that his words were taken out of context.
5. Prone to gaffes
Biden’s detractors say he is an outdated member of the establishment , too old for the position and with a tendency to put
His direct and folksy style has caused him some problems, such as when in the middle of the campaign he said that if an African-American was not convinced to vote for him it meant that he was not black, some statements by the who later apologized.
Biden says that the memory of his childhood stuttering makes him not like reading the speeches of an electronic prompter and that is why he prefers to speak from memory.
A journalist from the publication NY Magazine wrote last year that the prospect of Biden improvising a speech was something his campaign team seemed to “be focused on avoiding at all costs.”
It’s That is why his supporters breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that he was able to overcome the presidential debates and campaign speeches without saying anything that would put him in a bind.
She has also carried out smoothly all the interventions of the past two months during the transition process.
Another facet of her spontaneous and sociable personality is her propensity to get too close to people, which has led to uncomfortable situations, obviously in pre-coronavirus times.
In 2019, eight women accused him of inappropriate touching, hugging and kissing, while American television showed videos in which He was seen greeting women at public events with great physical proximity.
In response, Biden promised to “be more careful” in his interactions.
His “stubborn” attitude went from being an anecdote to something more serious when in March of 2020 a old aide, Tara Reade, alleged that the president sexually assaulted her ago 40 years in Washington.
Biden and his team rejected the accusation and the case ended up being blurred.
Although his Republican rivals tried to portray him as a A man with senile dementia who is in the hands of the radical left of the Democratic Party, Biden managed to get away with it and became the most voted president in the history of the United States.
Interestingly, when evaluating a few years whether or not they were encouraged to participate in the presidential race of 2016, Biden said: “I can die a happy man without being president” .
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