From columnist MonicaHesse: Joe Biden, the master of not quite getting it
Former vice president Joe Biden after a TV appearance on Friday, the second day of his 2020 presidential campaign. By Monica Hesse Monica Hesse Style reporter Email Bio Follow Columnist April 26 at 3:11 PM Joe Biden is becoming the master of not getting it. Of almost getting it, but not quite, and then explaining that he had gotten it, actually, but he did it when you blinked.
Previously, he’s said that he “wished [he] could have done something” for Hill. Which is a lovely sentiment but sidesteps the fact that he very literally could have done something for her. He could have, for example, allowed the testimony of a witness who supported Hill’s story. He was, perhaps, the only person who could have done something for her. Again, his statement could be repaired with such an easy fix: I wish I had done something and I feel deep remorse that I didn’t.
When confronted earlier this month by women who said his physical contact had made them uncomfortable — shoulder rubs, hugging — Biden issued a video apology. “Social norms are changing,” he said in a statement positioning him as a well-meaning grandpa trapped in an eddy of cultural upheaval. And then the next day he told a group of reporters that he was “not sorry for anything that I have ever done.
As I’m working through how to think about Biden, though, what I keep coming back to is that it’s not his previous actions that are disappointing. It’s the way he tries to distance himself from them. As if he were a victim of backward times, rather than a powerful legislator who should have been in charge of defining them.
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