Joe Biden’s voice thickened a little during his Memorial Day address in the pulsing heat of Arlington cemetery when he told the gathering – the distinguished, the veterans – that it was approaching nine years since the family had lost his son Beau. He was careful to make clear that his eldest had not perished on the battlefield but from a cancer caused, he said, by serving in the US army in Iraq where he spent most days next to a toxic burn pit. It was a reminder that for the folksy-jester “Scranton Joe” optimism which informs the tone of his speeches, there’s an abiding tragedy at the core of the man.
It could be said that in his absence, the presence of the late Beau Biden has never been more keenly felt. It hovers over this week’s trial of his brother Hunter, taking place in Wilmington, Delaware. The details are salacious and grist to the particular mill of Republican Party interests who have sought to smear the character of Hunter Biden and link him with nefarious deeds. And even the stoutest defence of the younger Biden son could not deny that he has made life extremely difficult for himself through a series of dubious and hugely damaging decisions.
Hunter is charged with purchasing a handgun while falsely claiming that he was not a drug addict when he made the purchase in 2018. His father said in an interview on Thursday that he will not use a presidential pardon if his son is found guilty – as well he may be.
The week has been a painfully public exposure for the Bidens. Hunter Biden’s former wife Kathleen Buhle; a former ex-girlfriend; and Hallie Biden, his brother’s widow with whom he had a brief relationship following Beau Biden’s death, all gave evidence as to his drug use. The testimony offers endless scope for insult and insinuation on the raging exchanges of social media. Behind it all, though, is a story of lingering family grief and the drugs epidemic which is sweeping the country.
The United States already seems to have reached a state of exhaustion with the 2024 election and with its candidates. In 2012, Beau Biden spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. It was not all that long ago but when you listen to the address now, it’s clear that he belongs to a vanished era in American politics. He quoted his father quoting Robert Frost and “promises to keep”. He told the crowd of promises made to “my brothers and sisters in uniform”. He told them he had watched his father, over three decades in the Senate, build “respect and goodwill on both sides of the aisle to move vital legislation”.
He recalled July 4th, 2009, in Iraq when Biden senior was on a trip there and led an actualisation ceremony in one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces. “And yes, we have miles to go before we sleep,” he told them before inviting the crowd to nominate Joe Biden – “my father, my hero” – for vice-president to Barack Obama’s second term by acclamation. It was a good speech: sincere, convincing. Beau looked like a younger version of his father only with more presidential hair.
This, of course, was the dream time for the Democrats. They would sail to a second term in office. That evening stands as proof that nobody knows anything. Had a clairvoyant tried to tell the arena that night that in little over five years, businessman Donald Trump would be president, they would have been escorted from the building. But then, had you given the gathering that evening a sneak-preview of the turn American and political life would take in the decade ahead, many would have walked out, shaken and bewildered.
At that stage, Beau Biden seemed set to broaden his father’s influence into a family dynasty. He won the 2006 campaign for Delaware attorney general by a massive 52 per cent of the vote.
“He’s supped at this table since he’s been three years old,” said Joe Biden that night, an observation that could have been an oblique reference to the initial family tragedy: the fatal car crash in Christmas 1972 which killed Joe Biden’s wife Neila and infant daughter Naomi and seriously injured Beau and Hunter, then just four and three years old respectively.
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It was anticipated in 2012 that Beau Biden would become a senator over time and in April 2014 he told supporters, via email, of his plans to run for Delaware governor in 2016. Illness ended that.
It’s impossible to guess where Beau Biden would be now, with a full decade of political service behind him. But it’s reasonable to assume that there would have been less turmoil within the immediate family, and that the Democratic Party could have had an emergent star in the run-up to the bitter mess of court rooms and constitutional chicanery, and the absolute sense of mutual distrust which has settled upon American political life.
“I would be perfectly within my rights to go after them,” Trump told conservative TV host Sean Hannity of the possibility of retribution against his political opponents.
“And it’s easy ‘cos its Joe Biden and you see all the criminality that’s going into the family and him – all of this money from China, from Russia, from Ukraine.”
Miles to go.