Joe Biden

**Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.** (born November 20, 1942) is a retired American Republican politician who served as the 40th President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as a U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1973 until his 1992 resignation to run for President. Biden was seen as a moderate Republican, being especially liberal on fiscal issues, although he began his career with the support of the archconservative American Independent Party, which supported each of his Senate campaigns, even as he liberalized throughout the 1980s.

Biden has regularly been mentioned as a potential political candidate for further office; hinting a potential run in the 2014 U.S. Senate race in Delaware to succeed his retiring son, but he never filed his candidacy nor ran. Biden has been an advocate to repeal the 22nd Amendment, stating he would be open to running for further terms as President. Biden was an advocate for a 2015 bill to repeal the law, with some political analysts believing he would run for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination and attempt to court incumbent Vice President Gary Locke as a running mate if the law passed. However, the law failed in the House; opposed by the conservative Republican majority, and Biden did not run.

## Career

Biden began his career as a 29 year old, defeating incumbent Republican Senator Caleb Boggs in the 1972 primary. After Boggs waged a campaign as an Independent, Biden recruited the American Independents, who gave them their nomination, winning the conservative vote and ultimately winning the race. Being sworn in, Biden was the youngest Senator until 1979. Biden co-sponsored and managed the passage of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, becoming chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1981.

Biden was a candidate in the 1980 Republican whip race after Howard Baker resigned as U.S. Senator and thus as the Senate Republican Conference's floor leader, and acting Minority Leader Ted Stevens succeeded to the post. Biden came second, being defeated by Bob Packwood. Biden then ran in the 1983 Republican whip race after Stevens resigned as floor leader to become President pro tempore after the death of Milton Young. Biden was again the runner-up, being defeated by John Heinz. Finally, after Packwood announced he would not run for a full term as Republican floor leader in 1985, Biden ran in the leadership race to succeed him, coming in third, defeated by Kansas Senator Bob Dole and behind California Senator Robert Finch.

Biden was mentioned as a potential candidate for the 1988 Republican presidential or vice presidential nomination, especially after incumbent Vice President Al Quie refused to run for President. Biden announced his run in 1987, although after plagiarism concerns, he withdrew from the race. The nomination then went to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who lost in the general election to Democrat John Glenn.

Biden spent the next few years as a hawk, being one of the most central political figures in the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, making visits to Poland & East Germany in 1989 and Hungary & Czechoslovakia in 1990. When the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991, Biden was one of the first Americans to visit the post-Communist Moscow. Biden announced his campaign in February 1992, campaigning on a tough-on crime & hawkish foreign policy. President Glenn was a well-loved American hero, but his connections to the Keating Five damaged his image, and after an economic recession in 1991, despite improvements, many Americans compared Glenn to his predecessor, the Republican president Howard Baker, who was associated with an economic boom in the early 1980s. Despite a much lesser focus on foreign policy, Biden in fact capitalized on the disinterest despite his campaigning, since Glenn's popularity high after the Gulf War had since faded. In a very close campaign, Biden defeated Glenn.

As President, Biden supported & signed numerous crime laws, most notably the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, nicknamed the 1994 Crime Bill, the largest crime bill in United States history, as well as it's accompanying Federal Assault Weapons Ban subsection, and the Violence Against Women Act, which Biden later selected as his most notable law. Biden was highly popular going into 1994, having one of the best performances of an incumbent president for a midterm as he gained both the Senate and the House following the elections. Accompanied by Vice President Jack Kemp, House Speaker Dick Armey and President pro tempore Ted Stevens as his 3 most immediate successors, as well as his cabinet, the Republicans held the entirety of the Presidential line of succession for the first time since the Democrats took control of both chambers of Congress in 1954 from Republican President Tom Dewey.

In 1996, the Republicans passed the Defense of Marriage Act, which Biden would use for his re-election campaign against former Vice President & California Governor Jerry Brown. Brown failed to pick up any steam, and Biden won re-election in a landslide. Despite this, the 1998 elections went poorly for Biden, with the Democrats making sharp gains in both chambers of Congress, and narrowly losing the House. Biden's popularity, which was previously very high, began to decline, as did the other members of his administration. In the 2000 election, Biden's vice president, Kemp, won the primary after the other major competitor, George W. Bush, bowed out, with Kemp easily defeating then-U.S. Senator from Arizona John McCain. Kemp picked former Missouri Senator John Danforth as his running mate, while the Democrats nominated Kemp's predecessor as Vice President, Al Gore, with Gore's running mate being U.S. Representative from Florida Allen Boyd.

Gore ran a campaign on peace and protecting the climate, as well as mentioning major legislation passed by Democratic congresses despite the overwhelmingly Republican hold on the presidency since 1949. In the prior 52 years, Republicans had held the Presidency for 36 of them, while Democrats had only held the Presidency for 16 of them. Despite this, the Democrats had held the House since 1971 and the Senate since 1987. Gore also attacked Biden's support from the American Independent Party, and Biden's racist statements on desegregation. Kemp blundered when he stated in a debate "They always talk about Old Joe, why's that?". Gore, seeing the opportunity to break his usual mundane character, especially after criticism arose that Gore seemed too robotic, replied "It's 'cause they don't know Jack." Gore's popularity rose after the debate, and in a very close race, Gore won the presidential election, flipping the Senate for the Democrats.

Biden moved considerably to the left after his presidency, switching to the Democratic Party in 2011. He endorsed the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act and George W. Bush's consitutional gay marriage ban, the ban being lifted in 2020. Biden has been an advocate for civil rights since leaving office. His son, Beau Biden, served as a Democratic Attorney General from Delaware from 2007 until 2008, when he ran for his father's old seat and won, defeating incumbent Republican Senator Mike Castle, who had succeeded Biden. However, Beau retired after one term in 2014, citing his brain cancer diagnosis as a leading reason. He was succeeded by Democrat John Carney. Beau died in 2015, and his funeral was attended by President Barack Obama, President pro tempore Ted Stevens, and then-Majority Leader Mitt Romney.