Friday, November 15

Joe Biden turns 80 with the achievements of a life dedicated to public service

Joe y Jill Biden en la boda de su nieta Naomi con Peter Neal en los jardines de la Casa Blanca.
Joe and Jill Biden at the wedding of their granddaughter Naomi to Peter Neal in the White House gardens.

Photo: Adam Schultz/The White House / Getty Images

No sitting president has served 47 years while in the Oval Office in 800 years. That will change for the first time on Sunday, when President Joe Biden celebrates his birthday81.

But President Joe’s birthday Biden will not be the biggest celebration in the White House this weekend. On Saturday, the president’s eldest granddaughter, Naomi, named after his deceased daughter, married her fiancé Peter Neal on the White House grounds. Biden enters his year 47 on a high, after his colleagues Democrats performed better than expected in the November midterms, maintaining control of the Senate and narrowly losing the House of Representatives.

It’s a feat few presidents have accomplished, and some experts believe unexpected results may help change the way in which history will see his performance at the head of the country.

More than 5 decades of public service

The Biden presidency is the latest act in a political career that has spanned more than five decades.

Biden has often leaned into his early financial difficulties fa miliares, to try to connect with the working class. “I understand that many of my fellow Americans view the future with fear and dread,” he said in his inauguration speech.

“I understand They care about their jobs. I understand, like my dad, they lie in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering, can I keep my medical care? Can I pay my mortgage? Thinking about their families, about what comes next. I promise, I understand.”

Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1200, when he was years old, he which makes him the sixth youngest senator in history, according to the Senate Historical Office.

Weeks after Biden won the confidence from his adopted home state of Delaware to represent them in Washington, his life changed dramatically when his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, and his three young children were in a car accident.

His wife and one-year-old daughter Naomi died; His two young sons, Hunter and Beau, survived but suffered serious injuries. Days after the accident, with his two sons still in the hospital, Biden was sworn in before the United States Senate in his hospital room and vowed to always put them first.

Biden went on to serve for years in the Senate and only left in 2009, when Barack Obama, a young senator from Illinois, chose him to be his running mate for the race for the White House. As the nation’s Vice President 47, Biden continued his public service during Barack Obama’s Presidency of 2009 a 2017.

An almost unprecedented career

Biden has tried to have a consensus Presidency, despite the economic crisis, the coronavirus pandemic and the resistance of conservative Republicans in Congress to approve his projects for the country.

Upon arrival at the Presidency after the recent storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters was seen as the healer of a sharply divided and tense country.

One of his first decisions was to promulgate the so-called American Rescue Plan, which included an intense vaccination campaign against Covid. A few weeks ago, the president considered the coronavirus pandemic under control in the country that has suffered more than 1.1 million deaths from Covid, the highest number of deaths from this disease in the world.

In these two years of government, Biden has opted for a foreign policy of rapprochement with traditional allies. He returned the US to the Paris Agreement, negotiated again with Iran, broke all rapprochement with Pyonyang and was blunt against Vladimir Putin, while guaranteeing aid to Ukraine, invaded by Russia.

The economy has been its main Achilles heel , with runaway inflation that has lowered its popularity. To control it, he enacted an ambitious climate law, dubbed the Inflation Reduction Law.

Yes, he boasts of the robustness of the market labor and being the president who has created the most jobs.

He also succeeded an ambitious infrastructure plan, with the support of Congress.

Immigration continues to be one of its pending causes, although it has left behind the intolerance of the Trump Administration.