profile of Joe Biden
Published on June 1, 1974 (less than 1.5 yrs after death of wife and daughter)
Death and the All-American Boy
excerpts:
“Let me show you my favorite picture of her,” he says, holding up a snapshot of Neilia in a bikini. “She had the best body of any woman I ever saw. She looks better than a Playboy bunny, doesn’t she?
“My beautiful millionaire wife was a conservative Republican before she met me. But she changed her registration. At first she didn’t want me to run for the Senate—we had such a beautiful thing going, and we knew all those stories about what politics can do to a marriage. She didn’t want that to happen. At first she stayed at home with the kids while I campaigned but that didn’t work out because I’d come back too tired to talk to her. I might satisfy her in bed but I didn’t have much time for anything else. That’s when she started campaigning with me and that’s when I started winning. You know, the people of Delaware really elected her,” he says, “but they got me.”
His 29-year-old sister Valerie and her husband Bruce have moved into the Senator’s house to take care of the children.
He defines politics as power. “And, whether you like it or not, young lady,” he says, leaning over his desk to shake a finger at me, “us cruddy politicians can take away that First Amendrnent of yours if we want to.”
Nothing in the First Amendment prohibits a reporter from socializing with a Senator. It’s been going on for years, and no one seems to have suffered any professional embarrassment. In fact, it’s said that Nancy Dickerson never would have become a television star had it not been for her friendship with Senator Lyndon Johnson. Syndicated columnist Marianne Means might still he just another scrambling Hearst reporter if John F. Kennedy hadn’t insisted that she cover him in the White House. And CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl frequently sees Senator Robert Dole, while writer Barbara Howar credits Senator Birch Bayh with her inside view of politics.
Senator Biden’s friends say he is looking for more than a wife and mother. “He also needs to find a First Lady,” says one, “a woman who enjoys politics and will help him get to the White House. I don’t know if he’ll end up marrying Francie Barnard but I do know that the woman he marries will he as rich and as pretty as she is.”
He feels the indignity is compounded by the temptation to sell out to big business or big labor for financial help, and says it’s almost impossible for a candidate to remain true to his conscience in this situation. He admits that more than once he was tempted to compromise to get campaign money. “I probably would have if it hadn’t been for the ramrod character of my Scotch Presbyterian wife,” he say’s. “I am not a rich man. And my family does not have money. If I sold every thing I own, including my house and cars, I could probably’ scratch up S200,000, but that’s nothing compared to most of the guys in the Senate.”
When it comes to civil rights and civil liberties, I’m a liberal but that’s it. I’m really quite conservative on most other issues. My wife said I was the most socially conservative man she had ever known. I’m a screaming liberal when it comes to senior citizens because I really think they are getting screwed. I’m a liberal on health care because I believe it is a birth right of every human being—not just some damn privilege to be meted out to a few people. But when it comes to issues like abortion, amnesty, and acid, I’m about as liberal as your grandmother. I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far. I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body. I support a limited amnesty, and I don’t think marijuana should be legalized. Now, if you still think I’m a liberal, let me tell you that I support the draft. I’m scared to death of a professional army.
https://www.washingtonian.com/1974/06/01/joe-biden-kitty-kelley-1974-profile-death-and-the-all-american-boy/
https://redstate.com/shipwreckedcrew/2020/10/21/joe-bidens-earliest-days-in-the-senate-revealed-him-to-be-crass-and-venal-regularly-using-his-office-for-monetary-gain-n266979