Five myths about Joe Biden

Matt Viser is a national political reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in October 2018. He was previously the deputy chief of the Washington Bureau for the Boston Globe, where he covered Congress, the presidential campaigns in 2012 and 2016, and John Kerry’s tenure as secretary of state.

President Joe Biden has had a unparalleled career in politics. He’s held office as one of the nation’s longest-serving senators, as a two-term vice president and, now, as the nation’s oldest president. His reputation, built over nearly half a century, is deeply embedded in political lore, from ice cream and aviators to his love of an Amtrak train. But as well known as he may be, several misconceptions still surround him.

Myth No. 1: Biden is an impoverished public servant.

More than once during his campaign, Biden pointed out that he was “the poorest man in Congress.” For more than a decade, he has referred to himself as “Middle-Class Joe.” And it’s true that Biden spent much of his life with far less wealth than most other top elected officials. He often ranked last among senators in net wealth during his 36 years in the Senate. “By the way, I’m proud of that,” he said in 2009.

But the poorest man in Congress is still among the wealthiest Americans: He and his wife, Jill, had an adjusted gross income of $215,432 in 1998, according to his tax returns. By his final years in office, the couple’s gross income totaled around $390,000 annually. He has always valued real estate, and he owns a 6,850-square-foot home in Wilmington, Del.

After he left the vice presidency, his earnings skyrocketed. Biden signed a book deal that Publishers Weekly reported was worth $8 million, and he earned six-figure payments for dozens of speeches. He used the proceeds to purchase a $2.7 million, 4,800-square-foot vacation house in Rehoboth Beach, Del., and he rented a 12,000-square-foot residence in McLean, Va., whose monthly rent Zillow estimated to be nearly $20,000. As Biden began his campaign, his income slowly receded. In 2017, the Bidens reported making more than $11 million; in 2018 they made $4.6 million. By 2019, that figure was about $985,000, according to their tax returns.

Myth No. 2: His gaffes are a liability.

His record of verbal blunders is hard to rival. As he told a crowd in 2018, “I am a gaffe machine.” He introduced his running mate in 2008 as “Barack America.” “What’s not to like about Vermont?” he asked while visiting neighboring New Hampshire. Several months into his presidential campaign, The Washington Post reported, Biden jumbled elements of three actual events into one wartime story that didn’t happen. His verbal miscues are something staffers have spent decades trying to control. “Biden advisers worry the gaffes are becoming a problem,”read a Vanity Fair headline in 2019.

But while Biden’s gaffes are sometimes cringeworthy, it’s hard to see how they’ve hurt him. The most costly error in his career, cribbing lines from a British politician during his 1988 presidential campaign, ended his candidacy, but it was not a minor instance of simply veering off script. He famously overcame a stutter that still trips him up every once in a while, but while the GOP tried to argue that it showed his mental unfitness for office, voters didn’t seem to care. Even his apparently accidental revelation on “Meet the Press” in 2012 that he favored same-sex marriage, coming before President Barack Obama had publicly said so, dragged the administration along with him, rather than resulting in his own apology and retraction.

The Trump era may have altered the prism through which verbal missteps are viewed. Voters often see gaffes now not as disqualifying but instead as a sign of humanity.

Myth No. 3: He’s a moderate.

“Is Joe Biden Too Centrist For Today’s Democratic Party?”asked NPR in 2019. “Biden aims to move left without abandoning centrist roots,”the Associated Press reported in May 2020.

This article of faith doesn’t fully capture Biden’s record over the decades. He’s certainly not a progressive in the mold of Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But he was never among the “blue dog” Senate Democrats who frequently voted with Republicans. For most of his time in that Chamber, he was more liberal than about 75 percent of his colleagues, according to Voteview, a database at UCLA. Among Democrats, he was often in the middle - 50 percent were more liberal than him, and 50 percent more conservative.

He is hardly one of the most liberal members of Congress, as he claimed during the campaign, but he has drifted leftward as his party has, even if he has continued always to search for consensus. A 1996 profile of Biden in the Almanac of American Politics described him this way: “He seems drawn again and again to try to reconcile the economic and cultural liberalism of the national Democratic Party, of which he is one of the leaders, with the economic and cultural conservatism of so many of those he grew up with: to explain one to the other, to reconcile them, to enable them to live happily together.”

Myth No. 4: Biden has always been a gay rights pioneer.

Biden in 2012 became the most prominent politician to back same-sex marriage. As president, his nominees include Pete Buttigieg, who would be the first openly gay Cabinet member if he’s confirmed as transportation secretary, and Rachel Levine, who would become the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Biden has often recalled how, when he was a young boy, he and his father saw two business executives in downtown Wilmington kiss. “My dad looked at me and said: ‘Joey, it’s simple. They love each other,’ " Biden said.

But for most of his career, Biden has espoused the views of the times. In 1973, he told a gay activist that his “gut reaction” was that homosexuals in the military or in government “are security risks.” He did not support the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, but he still voted for a wider defense bill that included it in 1993. In 1996, he voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which blocked recognition of same-sex marriage at the federal level. And even though he supported gay marriage in 2012, he had expressed opposition to it for years, including during a 2006 interview and in the 2008 vice-presidential debate.

Myth No. 5: Biden and Obama are besties.

On National Best Friends Day in 2019, Biden tweeted a photo of two friendship bracelets, the names Joe and Barack on interlocking pieces of string. “Happy #BestFriendsDay to my friend, @BarackObama,” he wrote. It was a reprise of a message he sent in 2016, wishing Obama a happy 55th birthday and writing, “A brother to me, a best friend forever.”

Like many intense relationships: It’s complicated. Obama and Biden did not start out close. One was cool and contemplative, the other a plain-spoken, gut-level pol. Over time they did develop a tight bond. Obama delivered a moving eulogy for Biden’s son Beau. Their families were friends, with Obama’s kids and Biden’s grandkids often together.

But there was also friction. Obama aides explored replacing Biden on the ticket in 2012. Obama was not encouraging when Biden was considering a 2016 presidential campaign, believing that Hillary Clinton would carry on his legacy rather than his former vice president. And Obama did not endorse Biden in his 2020 bid, instead staying neutral during a competitive Democratic primary race. The snubs illustrated “a pattern of political expediency from Obama that put a strain on his relationship with Joe, especially as they went their separate ways after the White House,” The Post’s Steven Levingston wrote in his 2019 book, “Barack and Joe: The Making of an Extraordinary Partnership.”

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