Joe Biden: The Comeback Kid

 

     Joe Biden has had a prominent and successful career, but it has not been without its struggles and even temporary defeats. 

     After performing poorly in college, he made it to Syracuse Law School and managed to graduate, but he soon found law to be repetitive and unfulfilling. He preferred public service, and from 1970 to 1972 he served on the New Castle County Council, one of only 3 in the state.

     In 1972, he became among the youngest senators elected in United States history at 29. However, his life was altered that December when his wife and toddler daughter were killed in an automobile accident shopping for Christmas trees. Despite this, he continued to serve in the Senate from 1973 to 2009, where he chaired the Foreign Relations and Judiciary Committees for a decade apiece, with such notable acts as passing the VCCLEA, VAWA, and Brady Bill; overseeing several Supreme Court confirmations; creating the first climate change bill; and standing up to ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

     He lost presidential elections in 1988 and 2008. Before being elected president in 2020, he served as vice president from 2009 to 2017, winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2017. After his son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015, he refused to run for president in 2016, and it was thought his political career was over. 

     His life has been successful, tragic, inspirational; a life few Americans can claim to have lived; but, through it all, his commitment to the American people remained unchanged.