The NPR Politics Podcast - What Joe Biden Learned From His 1988 Presidential Campaign

Episode Date: December 26, 2019

This week, the NPR Politics Podcast investigates defining moments in the lives of four top Democratic presidential candidates to understand how those experiences shape their politics today.Joe Biden's first attempt at running for president — during the 1988 election — ended so quickly that it was still 1987 when he dropped out. But that failure came at the same moment that Joe Biden won a major victory for Democrats: preventing President Reagan's Supreme Court nominee, Robert Bork, from being confirmed. This episode: campaign correspondent Asma Khalid, campaign correspondent Scott Detrow, and White House correspondent Tamara Keith.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I'm covering the presidential campaign. I'm Scott Detrow. I'm also covering that campaign. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House and that campaign.

And all this week, we're taking a closer look at the top four candidates in the Democratic presidential primary race. We're looking at who they are and why they believe what they believe. Essentially, what those turning points in their lives were that formed their political worldviews. Today, we're going to look at former Vice President Joe Biden. And, Tam, you've been looking into Joe Biden, and he has a very long public life. What did you decide to focus on? So I decided to focus on his first presidential campaign. He ran for president in 1988, but his campaign was so short-lived that he dropped out in 1987. And the moment that he drops out is this incredible turning point for him and also for Democrats. He was chairman of the race. But then he turns around and delivers this really huge victory for Democrats, helping to to block President Ronald Reagan's pick for the Supreme Court, a man named Robert Bork.

All right. So let's let's shake things up a little bit here on the podcast and take a few minutes to listen to that profile you put together of Joe Biden. It was the beginning of the end of Joe Biden's first presidential campaign. He just didn't know it yet. Now, Mr. Biden. Thank you very much. In his closing statement in a Democratic debate at the Iowa State Fair in August 1987, Biden made a biographical turn. And I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden... Talking about why his family had remained working class for generations. Is it because they didn't work hard? My ancestors who worked in the coal mines in northeast Pennsylvania don't come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours?

It turns out he was paraphrasing a rousing speech-turned-campaign ad from a British politician named Neil Kinnock. Was it because they were weak? Those people who could work eight hours underground and then come up and play football? Weak? Biden had referenced it in speeches before, with proper attribution. But this time, he made it his own. When the story broke, he had very little time to tamp down the controversy.

Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and it was about to take up President Ronald Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. I'm talking about the truth to help you guys. I do, Mr. Chairman. The stakes were high. As a law professor, Bork had criticized the legal reasoning behind Supreme Court decisions on civil rights and abortion. Republicans saw his nomination as a chance to reshape the court and public policy. Democrats, including Biden, were determined to stop him. This nomination is more, with all due respect, Judge, and I'm sure you agree,

than about you. Bork's hearings went on for 12 long days. Meanwhile, Biden's campaign was in trouble. There were questions being asked about whether the slip-up with the Kinnick speech was part of a pattern. Shouldn't have made much difference anyway, but you guys, the press, jumped on him. Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was a relatively junior Democratic senator at the time. You could not be running for president and trying to overcome some of the things that had gone wrong and still chair that committee. He had to get rid of the running for president or his running that committee would not have worked. And that's exactly what Biden did. On day eight of the Bork hearings during a break, he held a press conference in the Capitol. And therefore, it seems to me I have a choice.

I have to choose between running for president and doing my job to keep the Supreme Court from moving in a direction that I believe to be truly harmful. There will be other opportunities for me to campaign for president, but there will not be many other opportunities for me to influence President Reagan's choice on the Supreme Court. At some point during that day, Biden called the Judiciary Committee members together behind closed doors. Alan Simpson, then a Republican senator from Wyoming, was there. It was devastating. I mean, he was ambitious, as he is now, and he was running for president of the United States. And he was quite filled with angst.

Simpson says Biden was contrite. And he sat us down and he said, you know, it's been a tough thing. I've dropped out and I'm embarrassed and hurt, but I want you of the committee to know that if I've embarrassed you in any way where you don't feel comfortable with my chairmanship, I will resign my chairmanship. There was silence in the room. And that old Strom Thurmond, who was a ranking member,

leaned over and slapped his knee. He said, I'll Joe now, let me tell you. Just you forget that stuff. By Simpson's telling, the senators went around the room talking about all the mistakes they had made over the years and had a good laugh. Biden had long known that trying to run the Bork hearings while running for president might end badly, says Mark Gittinstein, a longtime Biden friend and advisor who was the chief counsel on the Judiciary Committee back then. He remembers a contentious meeting Biden attended with civil rights leaders about the Bork nomination. They raised this issue with him, you know, which is more important, your presidential race or

the Supreme Court fight? He said, without a doubt, the Supreme Court fight. I'll give up my presidential race if necessary to win this fight. I know how important and historic this was. And this was months before Kennick broke. And of course, ultimately, that's what happened. In a way, the Bork hearings allowed Biden to save face while quitting the race. He didn't have to stand there and say he was dropping out because of the plagiarism charges. No, he had something important to do. This country is going to be lifted up and I'm going to play a big part in doing it. But for now, folks, got to go handle the Bork hearings. And then he turned around,

went back to the hearing room and swore in the next witness. My business is behind us. Let's move on. And would you stand, Mr. Cutler, to be sworn? Ultimately, Bork's nomination failed in the Senate. It was bipartisan. Biden was able to sway a handful of moderate Republicans to vote against Bork. Reagan went on to nominate Anthony Kennedy for that Supreme Court slot. Over his generation on the court, Kennedy became a swing justice. Mark Gidenstein argues Biden was able to do more for progressive causes by sinking Bork than he would have been able to do as president. It shaped the court for 30 years on everything from saving Roe versus Wade to the, you know, the gay marriage issue. And as Biden said the day he quit the race, there would be other presidential campaigns and he would be there. All right. That was Tam's profile of former Vice President Joe Biden.

We're going to take a quick break and we get back. We'll talk more about that. Did you get a smart speaker for a gift over the holidays? Well, consider it the gift that keeps on giving, right? Because it can help you keep up with the news. Just say play NPR to hear your local NPR station and all your favorite NPR shows as well. And we're back. So, Tim, what do you think the key lesson for Biden was out of how he conducted those hearings? The lesson for Biden was that he ran that hearing his way, right? Like there were people who wanted him to focus on abortion and focus on civil rights and just tear in to Robert Bork. And Biden's approach to the hearings was instead to

sort of just let Bork discuss his judicial philosophy at length. And in the process, Biden was able to bring along a few moderate Republicans and and also more conservative Democrats. And Mark Gittenstein argues and others argue that by doing that, you know, Biden was able to get this huge progressive victory through very non-progressive means, you could say. So, Tam, when I was doing my similar profile on Bernie Sanders, I just yet again noticed, as we've talked about before, how consistent Bernie Sanders has been over the years. I'm wondering, what was it like going back and digging up all this stuff from the 1988 presidential campaign at Senate? Did it sound like you were hearing and looking at a different Joe Biden or were there similarities to him today in 2019? There were a lot of similarities. I mean, his hair was brown instead of white.

But other than that, like, you know, he had a sharp tongue. He had, you know, like Biden gets that sort of like, I'm fighting something. I've got some attitude. He had that back then. In fact, when he ended the press conference, he said something like, before I say anything too sarcastic, I'd better get out of here. And the other thing that really stands out to me, and I think that Biden continues to be, even though he was vice president for all those years, he continues to be a Senate man and sort of an institutionalist. And in going back through this tape, it really does feel like a very different time in terms of the institution and in terms of politics.

I mean, it was striking to hear how he was able to persuade a number of Republicans to agree with him in sinking that nomination, because it feels like when you hear him on the stump at times, he suggests that he can continue working with Republicans. And there are Democrats running this cycle who are kind of suspect of that idea that you could just get rid of Donald Trump and go back to a bipartisan way of living. And yet he seems to espouse that vision now, just like he had back then. No, he continues to believe what he believed then, which was that he could work with the other guys. And there's a moment that isn't in the story. But when he, you know, in the story, there's this part

where he's behind closed doors and, you know, the members rally behind him. But they're behind closed doors. Right. So other senators rallying together, maybe that's what you'd expect. But they did it out in public, too. They go into the hearing room and and Ted Kennedy says, well, you know, the chairman just had this really difficult moment and I want him to know that we're here to support him. And then Strom Thurmond pipes up and he says, well, the Democrats just lost their most articulate spokesman. Now, can you imagine, you know, Senate Republican in this heated battle over a Supreme Court pick? I mean, like, could you imagine Lindsey Graham right now during the Kavanaugh hearing going and saying something super nice about Dianne Feinstein in the middle

of a hearing? I don't know. All right, we are going to leave it there for now. You can make sure to listen to the rest of the Candidate Series. Those profiles are in your podcast feed all this week. And you can chat about them in our Facebook group at n.pr slash politics group. I'm Asma Khalid. I'm covering the 2020 campaign. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.